


Akumu

by joisbishmyoga



Category: Meitantei Conan | Detective Conan | Case Closed
Genre: Alternate Universe - Psychopaths, Dysfunctional Family, Implied Incest, Threats of Rape/Non-Con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-15
Updated: 2014-09-30
Packaged: 2017-12-11 22:50:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 9
Words: 77,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/804134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joisbishmyoga/pseuds/joisbishmyoga
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Heiji really shouldn't have followed those two suspicious guys in black at the amusement park.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a scene in Inconceivable, where Kaito and Shin'ichi are long-separated twins who've been unwittingly in hiding from the Syndicate (Black Org) their entire lives. This is the flipside, where the Syndicate caught them young.

Heiji's head hurts, and he can't see.

"Hey, Campari, lookit here... we got ourselves a spy." Hard hands have a grip on his arms, in his hair, dragging him stumbling to pitch onto his knees.

A soft, annoyed sound. "So take care of it." Behind his head, a hammer cocks, the soft click twisting like ice in his guts, but the second voice snaps, "Not like _that_. Not here. We can't afford that kind of mess; try that new stuff."

Cold chuckling, and calloused fingers shove something small into his mouth, poking deep until he nearly chokes, then his mouth is full of water and he has to swallow, can't breathe--

He still can't move, dark mist is in the way now and he's hot, hot, _too hot--_

"What on earth--?"

"Dammit, she must not have tested it enough."

"Inexplicable pile of clothes my _ass_. I'll go raid the lost and found. We can't sneak him out looking like that."

Those same hands, much larger now (large enough to cover his full face, what is going on?!) yank cloth away, and he stares up into the steely blue eyes of two identical faces. Gods... they aren't any older than him.

One calloused hand claps over Heiji's mouth, shoving him flat onto his back, while the other clamps down over his neck. "Say goodnight, now," the man says, a sharp smirk on his face as his messy-haired twin vanishes into the descending blackness...

Heiji has only vague impressions after that, all of which end with a cloying scent and something cool over his mouth and nose. Tugging at his clothes. His hat on the messy twin's head. A warm jacket over his back and a heartbeat under his ear. The clatter of a train.

A door slams shut, and one crooked knuckle tips his chin up. The movement sends Heiji's head and stomach spinning. Someone whistles. "Man, aniki, the bruises are already coming up. Think you did brain damage?"

"I wonder if it would be better," comes the reply. "Recognized him yet?"

"Eh? Should I?"

"Amari." Whoever is holding Heiji up abruptly spins him to face out, one arm tight around his chest and the other clamped under his chin, his legs dangling. Heiji's stomach roils. "Meet Hattori Heiji. Detective."

"... _Oooh._ "

Heiji vomits all over their shoes.

He tries, weakly, to fight the flurry of hands grabbing at him, but the twins are too good (and outnumber and outweigh him besides), and by the time he heaves a second time he has his head over the toilet and his wrists tied to his ankles.

They're buckling something around his neck when a cell phone buzzes. Both twins freeze, and the phone buzzes a second time into the silence.

Then one twin practically vanishes from the cramped toilet cubicle, and the world spins and Heiji is smacking hard against the porcelain back. " _Not a sound_ ," Amari hisses, grip just shy of choking Heiji out again.

Heiji bares his teeth anyway, and Amari leans hard against his small chest.

"Test To Destruction," Amari adds, eyes glittering like ice under his shaggy bangs. The threat is enough to snap Heiji's mouth shut again, stay quiet and still even as Amari's gaze slips away, focuses watchful and wary through the wall.

Out in the apartment, comes a calm, "Patience, patience." The other twin -- Campari, Heiji thought he'd heard the name Campari in that dazed moment before the drugging and confusion -- sounds like he's teasing someone. "She just didn't mention how much of a stink that new stuff puts up. Part of the report, recommend agents get the heck away from the scene if they use 4869. It works great but it's quite risky walking through town smelling like a missing person's pile of clothes."

There's a pause.

"Shower," Campari answers. "Anyway, reporting in. The trade-off went fine, and we set off the explosives in the suitcase at 4:39 pm. We also had to eliminate a witness." _Me_ , Heiji thinks. "Some guy was sneaking around trying to spy on us, and we used 4869. It's pretty fascinating to watch it work, actually; definitely one of her more creative inventions." _Creative! Burns like hell, I've somehow shrunk, and this lunatic thinks it's creative--!_ And now Heiji's lip stings; he can taste blood. "Yes, Grandfather. We'll be more careful next time, sir. Add Hattori Heiji's name to the list of deaths, please?"

_I'm not dead! Gods and ancestors, if these psychos are afraid of their grandfather (I might rather he think I am dead). Test-to-destruction, is this guy a Professor Hojo or what? Coupla twin Sephiroths? (Man I play too many video games...)_

Campari hangs up.

Amari's eyes snap back to Heiji, sparkling dangerously, but suddenly the pupils dilate. And then there's a fist in his hair and a tongue licking deep into his mouth.

_What the fucking sicko pervert--!_

The door swings further open, and Campari merely raises a brow. "We have a new assignment," he says simply, as Amari slides free. There's a thin streak of blood on his lower lip, which he licks blatantly before winking. (Okay, not a pervert? Or not a shotacon _[I'm shrunk and not a dwarf I'm a little kid what the hell]_ but a bloodlicking kind of ew perv?) Campari adds, "Did you explain?"

"Not yet."

"Ah." Campari leans down, just the slightest bit, the corners of his mouth quirking up sharply. "It's very simple. If Grandfather finds out about you, we will be compelled to relinquish you." A pause. "One way or the other."

Amari chimes in, "If he finds out _enough_ , it's straight to the labs. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. If he doesn't," one hand springs up, index finger out and thumb up to shape a gun, and pops it right in the center of Heiji's forehead, "At least we'll make it quick."

They haul Heiji out of the bathroom after that announcement, ignore his snapping teeth and flying fists as they release the ties on his wrists and ankles, knotting the rope into a complex harness around his torso, deft hands dipping under his clothing. They then sling him cheerfully at the foot of the couch, pull the trailing end of the rope out from under the back of his shirt, and loop it around the sofa's heavy wooden leg and tie it off in the jangling rings of the dog collar. Heiji chokes a bit, the heavy couch squeaking a centimeter across the floor, and then the twins flop onto the cushions and he can't get a second squeak of motion.

Their legs are tucked up under each other on the cushions, Amari sprawled more over Campari than not, so he can't even bite them from here. He's stuck flat on his side on the floor.

"So. New assignment?" Amari asks, which is enough to make damn sure Heiji's going to listen while he picks at the knots.

"Data sabotage, frame the section head, convenient suicide." The way Campari says it, he means murder.

Amari hmmphs. "Grandfather is such a stick in the mud."

"Risk assessment."

"Bleh."

"I agree."

"One of these days..."

The pause this time is more considering. Shifting on the couch above, then a distinctly measuring look meets Heiji's seething stare. "... Perhaps _this_ day," Campari says. 

Amari lights up. "Dibs on Tequila!"

"Yes, yes." Campari ruffles a hand affectionately through Amari's messy hair. "But what do we do about Shi-neechan?" He says the 'nee' almost quickly enough to slur it into 'shi-ne'. Dying-chan. Lovely, a woman nicknamed Death. "She'd be good to have available."

Both eyes slide back to Heiji. "... We can probably cut a deal," Amari muses. "It's not like she really gives a fuck about anything but Ake-nee. What about Baachan?"

They grin at each other, and then Amari makes a mock-spooky 'woooo' sound and raises his arms ghoulishly. "Zombie-baachan is huuuungry," he moans, looming over a snickering Campari's lap, fingers wiggling threateningly towards undefended ribs. "Zombie-baachan wants _braaaains_. Tasty, nutritious, tender young brains! With a side of REVENGE!"

Pillows fly.

Heiji manages to squirm out of the way, curling backwards half-under the couch, before the pair roll off onto the floor. His teeth already bared, he has a split-second to decide -- bite or avoid notice? -- before his fingers are caught in a crushing grip.

" _Excellent_ ," Amari purrs. A slight tug at one loosened bit of the knot sends a causes a faint vibration through the collar, as if the guy's stroking the scant centimeter of bared rope. "You managed to get a start on one of _my_ knots."

Well. Since he's gotten the jerk's attention anyway... Heiji jackknifes and snaps at Amari's arm. (It's only after he tastes blood that he remembers what's already happened with blood in his mouth.)

But Amari just grins like he doesn't even feel it, two fingers smacking firmly across Heiji's nose. "Bad puppy."

Oh, now it is on. Heiji growls, and it's not that he wants to... okay, yes, he wants to beat the lunatic into the dirt, but he's kind of lacking in shinnai and freedom of movement and oh yeah about a meter of height and forty-five kilos of muscle, and if he rips a chunk out of the crazy guy's arm it's not because he has any other options--

Amari's other hand tucks up under Heiji's chin, thumb and forefinger digging into the hinges of his jaw, and slowly, painfully, forces Heiji's mouth open. He slides his arm free, eyeing the bleeding bite mark with a glint of something sharp and brittle in his eye. "That's going to take some makeup to cover."

"It won't get you out of the assignment."

"Awww."

"Here." Campari tosses a small bottle at Amari's head. "Iodine."

Amari grumbles as he treats the bite, and Campari settles in next to Heiji, out of biting range. And then Campari strips Heiji's pants off.

"H--hey! What the fu--NO!" The loose underwear's gone with, and Heiji is bare from the waist down. Campari coolly hikes Heiji's oversized T-shirt up under his armpits, one large hand pinning his wrists to the floor, and begins tracing the planes of thin muscle with unmistakable intent. "GET OFFA ME! I'll rip it off, I swear I will--"

"You bit Amari."

"AND I'LL DO IT AGAIN," Heiji howls.

"Then we'll just have to make the consequences unpleasant enough to deter that." That calloused hand drops to lightly cover Heiji's groin. "Unless you offer something else."

Heiji's never felt so sickened or cold in his life. What else does he have? Chances are they won't give a damn about the details of his cases, and they've already cleaned out his wallet.

Amari pokes at Heiji's temple. "First hint's a freebie: promising _not_ to bite is a good starter offer."

" _Starter_ ," Campari repeats pointedly. His fingers squeeze lightly. "But you've already bitten once."

"Yer _so_ subtle," Heiji hisses out. Can't show the panic. Can't show how utterly, horrifyingly, ice-in-his-veins _sick_ the threat is making him. (Are they really physically capable of raping what looks like a child? How could they even _know?_ ) "Don't hagglin' involve makin' counteroffers that're too high or somethin?" (Give me a hint that ain't sexual.)

Amari smirks. "True, true. Let's see... how about complete obedient docility?"

"You'd be bored in a week and then I'd get shot," Heiji manages to snap. "No thanks."

"He knows you so well already," Campari murmurs, his smirk a shade darker and more knowing than his twin's. "No aggressive moves?"

"Which lasts right up until one of you startles me. On purpose, I'd bet, too." Neither twin denies it. Heiji exhales noisily, blowing his sweaty bangs out of his eyes to buy time. _Think, dammit, think!_ "How about... I won't try ta kill 'r maim you, and you don't molest me?"

Amari holds up his arm. "Is this maiming?" he asks, mock-innocently.

"If I'd taken a chunk out, yeah," Heiji admits. "So... maimin's permanent, 'n molestin' is naked grabby stuff."

"We reserve the right to claim medical necessity," Campari replies, taking his hand off Heiji's crotch with a smooth (chilling) caress. "And we'll extend 'molesting' to include the groin and inner thighs over clothing."

"An' no fakin' medical necessity," Heiji says.

"I'm willing to agree to that. Amari?"

"Deal." Amari tugs the T-shirt back down to Heiji's knees. Then he unbuckles the collar and scoops Heiji off the floor. "And now, bedtime!"

"WHAT?!"

Campari snickers as he opens up the couch, springs creaking. The sleeper mattress is already covered in tucked-in bedding, sheets and knitted blanket both in a suspiciously dried-blood shade of brown. Amari drops Heiji to bounce right in the center of the bed, catching up the loose collar and ducking to buckle it somewhere in the metal frame, and then a small mountain of pillows lands on Heiji's head.

"I AIN'T SLEEPIN' WITH YOU!"

Amari yanks the shirt off over Heiji's head, and Heiji dives for the blankets. _Nononononono--_ Then he spots a fresh shirt poking out of the pile of pillows. _Mine._

By the time he pulls the new shirt firmly on, both twins have stripped down to boxers. (Amari's wearing _Hello Kitty boxer briefs._ ) Heiji's brain can't take any more: he sits numbly as the twins step around the corner, into the kitchenette-foyer. He can hear low murmuring, the rush of water in the bathroom, some soft wet sounds that he does not want to recognize.

They come back with their eyes bright and almost soft, and clamber into the bed on either side of Heiji. Campari slings an arm across Heiji's chest, Amari's hand lands heavy atop Heiji's head, and they shove Heiji flat into the pillows.

Heiji growls.

"Floor's not an option," Campari says, yawning. "You'd go for the knots in an instant 'n try to escape. 'M not putting up with that tonight."

"This way, we'll feel you move," Amari agrees, flopping practically on top of Heiji. Campari presses in against Heiji's other side, and it's like being squished in a scary (mostly-)naked twin sandwich. (Amari's right, Heiji won't be able to move without waking them, unless they roll apart in the night.) "Night, aniki."

"Night," Campari mumbles back, and then he's clearly out like a light. Amari's breathing evens out and slows, and minutes later he seems to be asleep too.

Heiji stays awake long into the night.

-0-0-0

Except it's not as long as it could be. He wakes up at some silent hour before dawn, pallid orange streetlight streaming in through gap in the curtains, aching with the need to pee.

_Aw crap._

Going in the bed is not an option. It would serve the twins right, but who knows what they'd do in retaliation if they wake up with their only mattress soaked? (Also, the idea's disgusting.) Which leaves only...

Yeah. Because if Heiji can slip out of bed without waking them, he's going to use the toilet instead of escape. Right.

... Of course, there's nothing that says he can't use the toilet _after_ he escapes.

Slowly, Heiji edges himself towards the head of the bed. The twins' arms are heavy, sliding loosely upwards with him as he moves; he carefully, so carefully, settles his fingertips on their forearms, pushes lightly as he eels his way infinitesimally free. Campari's hand drags over his butt -- Heiji barely manages not to flinch, and he knows he would've jerked away and probably woken them had Amari's hand settled against him instead of the mattress -- and then the twins' arms lay crossed over his legs. It's far easier to scootch back sitting up, easier to fold his legs out from between them and let their arms rest in the warm divot left between them.

He's almost loose. The rope harness, knotted in the middle of his back, trails one end down between the couch back and the bed. And whereas it would be a bitch and a half to try to untie himself, the other end is simply a collar buckled somewhere in the framework, and _that_ any idiot could undo in the dark.

... It's got to be a trap. A bell, a drugged needle, an electric shock, something. But he's got to take the chance. (He needs to get out! And pee. His bladder's starting to hurt something fierce.)

He reaches down into the workings of the couch, feeling carefully, blindly, down the soft rope rather than chance patting around possibly-booby-trapped struts. (He wants out, he _needs_ out, he can feel the twins' slow breathing against his ankles and -- he reaches the end of what rope he can reach kneeling up -- he has to bend over to get at the collar.)

Fuck the bastards for making him paranoid. They're asleep. They won't see him bend over crouching between their heads and stretch for the collar and get too-small fingers on the buckle and _two hands clamp down on each ankle auuuuuuugh._

"And where are we going?" Campari asks.

Heiji's heart is still flapping somewhere up near the ceiling as he turns his head. The bastard still looks dead asleep to the world. Both of them do, even with one hand each like steel manacles on his legs and tiny smirks playing at the corners of their mouths. "... Toilet," Heiji snaps sullenly.

"With a side of escape, I'm sure."

Heiji won't dignify that with an answer.

Campari shoves himself up, hand heavy on Heiji's leg, and rolls out of bed with a catlike stretch. Then he reaches down between Heiji's arms, large fingers fiddling deftly next to Heiji's own, and pulls the collar out. He tugs, Heiji follows (Amari's grip is suddenly as loose as water) and his feet land on the cool floor.

"Thought you'd have made me bargain," Heiji says warily, though he hurries ahead as far as the leash -- call a spade a spade, yeah? -- will let him. Toilet, toilet, toilet now--

"Uh huh, right," Campari replies, sleepy and sarcastic as Heiji half-dances into the bathroom. "Because sleeping in a wet bed is just what we always wanted. You don't have to bargain for that." He shuts the door behind him, and Heiji freezes. Campari's eyes brighten with amusement. "Privacy, on the other hand..."

"Oh shut up and tell me what I gotta offer ta get ya out."

"Can't trust you that far yet, sorry." Campari's poorly-hidden laughter and bedhead makes him a perfect match for Amari, not that that's so difficult for twins. He reels the leash shorter and yanks Heiji's shirt off. (Heiji's hands snap instinctively over his crotch.) "Toilet, bath, and then BREAKFAST," he yells towards the bedroom. "Since we're up already."

_They can't molest me. (Not without breaking the deal, and I'm getting the idea that they have some pathological thing for bargaining. The psychopath's rules of the game or something. Should've read more psychology crap.) ... If they did there's no stoppin' them anyway, not like this._ Heiji's stomach churns, but he gamely turns his back on Campari (ignoring the half-panicked itch between his shoulder blades and on the back of his neck) and does his business.

"So," Campari says when he's done, and Heiji twitches. "Now that you aren't distracted by more pressing matters," Heiji turns back around quickly, hands settling over his (unnervingly small) groin once more, "I think you'd like knowing a bit more about the situation, hm? And to wash off the smell of apotoxin." He rolls open the pocket door next to the toilet, then circles around Heiji to close the toilet lid and take a seat on it (and on Heiji's shirt). One foot pointedly settles into the doorway, resting against the pocket door so it can't close.

Heiji suddenly feels (and smells) the thin film that seems to have almost seeped into his pores. (More like out of them, actually, in a flash of intuition and half-remembered putrid steam.) It smells faintly of rotting lemons and he needs to get it off. Now. (Fuck it all to hell it's the grease from his own decaying body auuuuuuuugh--)

He bolts for the bath faucet _(I have seen worse I have fallen in worse I will not show this bastard the weakness of throwing up on him again!)_ , and grabs a washcloth off the shelf, soaping it up without even waiting for the water to warm. Scrub with ice water. Scrub again with quickly-warming water. Scrub a third time with water almost too hot to stand, knocking the plug into the drain to start filling the tub properly.

"Shampoo's on the second shelf," Campari offers mildly.

It's some brand Heiji's never heard of, advertising no scent and a deep clean, and it froths thickly in Heiji's hair.

Water splashes onto Campari's bare feet and legs, out over the tiled floor of the toilet stall (Heiji can see it out of the corner of his eye), but Campari is ignoring it. "As you hopefully have noticed by now, Amari and I like our little deals," he says. "Maybe you'll try deducing why, maybe you won't, doesn't much matter either way. But you'll learn that we're... fairly scrupulous about sticking to our word." A pause. "It should be ironclad once we've finished our next project."

And that's not worrying at _all_ , that apparently their word isn't ironclad right the fuck now.

"Anyway," Campari continues. "Here's how it works. Basic survival's stupid to negotiate over -- if we wanted you dead we'd have done it already -- so you don't have to bargain for food, water, medicine, clothing, or use of the bath and toilet." Heiji dares cast a dour glance out from under his soaked bangs, and Campari's mouth quirks up in a grin. "We _do_ have to smell you."

"... I'd argue the point, but I like being clean," Heiji admits grudgingly. He also likes being alive instead of shot through the head, so he's not going to say stupid snarky things about being let go. He rinses the shampoo out, white suds swirling around his feet and down the drain, and checks his arm with an assessing sniff.

He almost slips on the lingering bubbles when Campari abruptly moves. Plain blue boxers land on the wet tile ( _yike_ he's big), and Campari crowds Heiji into the corner of the washing cubicle -- the only way to get space is to topple-splash into the tub, and then Campari winds the leash tight so that Heiji can't get back out and reach the doorway.

(The way Campari's eyes are glinting, the jerk totally did that on purpose. Heiji ducks chin-deep into the hot water and watches warily, fingers white-knuckled on the tub's rim, but Campari simply settles onto the shower stool and reaches for a fresh washcloth.)

Watching Campari wash up completely ruins the point of using the tub. Heiji's not going to relax, despite the demanding heat, and ignoring Campari when he's so close (and naked) is not happening, deal or no deal.

Campari shuts off the water, stands, and grabs a towel. It's fairly evident that he's going to skip a proper soak, and -- as he tugs on the rope, the harness heavy and loose with water, but no more escapable for that -- that he's not going to let Heiji stay in alone.

Heiji pulls himself back out of the tub, catches the towel Campari tosses at his head, and wraps himself up like a mummy. (The towel is large and thick, a snowy white that doesn't have a whiff of bleach to it. Campari's towel, Heiji notices, does have the scent.)

Outside, the room's lit by a single, pallid light over the sink, Amari half in shadow at the stove. Heiji can smell American pancakes -- he spots a stack of them half-hidden by the mixing bowl -- and is that...?

"I hope you didn't put chocolate chips in ours, you heathen."

Amari flashes a grin over his shoulder. "Nope, only mine. You got blueberries."

"Allergies?" Campari asks.

"Googled him," Amari answers cheerfully. "If he's got any, the fans don't know it."

"I'm allergic, all right," Heiji mutters, stretching out to the end of his leash to grab a plate. "Allergic to psychotic blue-eyed teenage twin kidnappers."

The twins burst into near-identical giggles, Campari's stifled behind a hand. Then Amari piles pancakes onto Heiji's plate, and flips the last batch onto his own.

The couch has been closed away during Heiji's bath, a low table (already set with jam and hot black tea) set out before it and the curtains along one wall pulled open. Behind a narrow strip of balcony and its thick guardrail, the streetlights burn gold and white against a slowly-blueing sky. They're easily fifteen stories up, and whatever buildings are on the other side of the road are lower than this one. Definitely no escape that way, not even a chance of having a neighbor see into the apartment and call the cops.

Campari spoons preserves onto his breakfast, sips deeply at the steaming tea, then says, "We never accounted for _this_ in our ideas." Bright, amused eyes flick towards Heiji.

"New plan?" Amari asks.

"New plan." More tea, then Campari starts to eat. "Without Baachan and the sisters," he says between bites, "thirteen."

"Lucky thirteen," Amari says wryly. Then, "Head down. Hands in."

"Right or left?"

Amari actually hesitates at that, a split-second that Heiji wouldn't have noticed if it hadn't come with a flicker-flash of light shaken from Amari's fork. "... Both would be faster."

Campari goes soft, almost stricken. "Amari. No." Amari's face goes painfully mulish, and Campari's own shifts to match. They stare each other down for a long moment -- Heiji's own eating slows with the instinct to not catch the predators' attention -- and then Campari's gaze slides back to Heiji and his mouth relaxes, smug. "We can't. Not with him along."

Amari looks at Heiji too, an airy smirk like a mask slapping back up over his face. "Oh, I don't know," he says, stroking his fingertips over Heiji's face (Heiji smacks his hand away). "He'd look lovely in blood splatter."

Wait wait wait, _"What?!"_ Heiji yelps.

"Chibi-chan," Amari coos, hooking a hard hand under Heiji's chin, "the best way to protect you from Grandfather is to kill him."

Campari nods -- they're talking about their _grandfather_ , how much of a scary Hojo bastard is he?! _Test to Destruction_ , they'd said last night... "And if we kill one of them, we have to kill them all. They don't take well to agents eliminating each other without orders."

"So we've been dying for an excuse," Amari finishes.

Heiji suddenly isn't hungry anymore.

Breakfast ends quickly after that. Heiji's set to washing dishes that Campari dries, while Amari showers, and then they dig into the closet. Out come shirts and exercise shorts, jeans and slacks, two large rolls the size of gym bags, and Amari flips down an ironing board as Campari opens one roll. It turns out to be full of makeup and colored powders and brushes and sponges; Campari spritzes his face with something clear, then pulls out a tube of dark tan cream and begins rubbing it all over his face.

Amari, meanwhile, has opened the other roll to show sewing supplies. He pulls out a pair of flimsy, far-too-revealing exercise shorts in red. "Hold this," he says, holding them up against Heiji's waist and pressing Heiji's hands firmly over them. A few quick tugs, a marker following each one, and Amari tosses them at the ironing board. He repeats it with a T-shirt that's probably a size too small for either twin, and Heiji gets passed back to Campari.

Campari now looks very nearly the same color as Heiji. He catches Heiji under the chin, peering closely at him. The makeup sponge swipes over Heiji's throat, leaving a thin layer of velvety gunk. Ick. "Hm." Pinching at his own blackened hair, Campari spikes it forward, sharpens the cowlick in the back, and suddenly there is a reasonable facsimile of someone who could well be Heiji's cousin sitting there. "Got it." And he switches places with Amari.

Amari's got the shorts with him, and they now look like something a real kid would wear. "In," Amari says, holding the shorts open for Heiji to climb into. At the side seams, Heiji can see the fabric's been folded, some sort of glue strip still warm against his fingers and waist.

Then Amari goes for the spritzer and tube of tan makeup, and Campari hauls Heiji out of the way. He sits back down on the floor in front of Heiji, an empty shoulder holster on over his undershirt.

"All right," he says, pulling the towel off of Heiji and beginning to work on the harness knots. "Here's how this works. We're going to be armed." Obviously. "You fight, you yell for help, you try to run off, we start shooting. If there's no crowd around, which is highly unlikely, we'll go find one and start shooting."

"Boom. Headshot," Amari contributes.

"Maybe you'll get away. Maybe the police will take us down. But before that can happen, we have twenty-four bullets per magazine, two guns, extra ammo, and we haven't missed a shot since we were six." He doesn't need to tell Heiji to do the math. 

The rope harness slithers free of the shorts, and Campari lets it lay where it falls. "Shirt should be cool enough to wear now," he finishes, tipping his chin towards the ironing board as he stands. Heiji grabs the shirt, Campari grabs two guns from the top shelf of the closet, and Amari grabs jackets.

While Campari is hiding ammo cartridges in cargo-pant pockets, Amari rolls up the makeup and sewing supplies again, stuffing them into backpacks. Heiji gets his own pack, a sunny yellow thing which looks suspiciously like one of those mini-backpack purses that Kazuha's said are retro-chic, whatever that means. Amari tucks a few yen in one pocket, an opened box of candy in another, and a manga magazine in the main compartment.

They pause in the genkan to put shoes on -- Heiji hadn't seen it, the night before, but one of the twins must've stolen a pair of lost sneakers for him. They even almost fit. -- then Amari's expression twists, subtle movements of muscle that, for a moment, shift the planes of his face into something very like Heiji's mother's. And then he smiles. "Ready to go, Aniki?"

Campari's grip on Heiji's hand is unbreakable. "Let's."

-0-0-0

There is something really fucking sick about how much little kids _don't_ get noticed. Heiji knows his poker face is shit, that he cannot possibly look at all like he's cool with his company (and that when the twins bought tickets on the train to Tokyo, he paled drastically because yeah okay the chances of being recognized as himself in Osaka suck donkey dong but they don't exist at all in Tokyo, nobody knows him in Tokyo). But he got dragged through ten blocks of commuter-packed city streets, past easily thousands of people, and _every single look he got_ skated right over him to bounce off the twins' presence. It was like some sort of subconscious checklist, is that a kid, check, does he have adults, check, is 'look at his face and possible abject horror' completely absent from the list, check!

He forces himself to smile at the girl selling bento at a tiny counter in the station, the girl who beams and here-you-go-bozus and _doesn't fucking look_ at him, the girl who's too busy giggling and flirting back with Amari. He can barely eat the bento when lunchtime rolls around (at least the twins didn't get him one of the hideously kawaii kiddie ones), but he's faced kendo matches and high school exams and his mother after breaking his leg doing stupid shit on his old bicycle, and he knows he needs to keep up his strength.

Tokyo is, somehow, worse. Maybe it's how everyone's managing to look frenetic while walking just that tiny bit slower, so that the twins' weight is dragging on Heiji's hands enough to notice (more). Maybe it's how many more people there are in downtown Tokyo, or how they're all speaking funny and not giving so much as a 'wtf' glance at the twins' Kansai-ben.

Amari disappears into the crowd for about five minutes, and comes back wearing a black baseball cap and a bluetooth earpiece. "Clear."

Campari leads them to the crosswalk at the end of the street, and then they double back to a high-rise apartment with tidy green hedges on either side of the entrance. The lobby is empty at this time of day, quiet and cool and bland, as is the elevator to the third floor. He expects one of the twins to pull out keys or lockpicks -- they seem the type to melt down or hide door keys so they don't get stolen -- but instead they silently drop backpacks and press their backs to the wall on either side of one apartment door.

Campari's hand clamps over Heiji's mouth again. This is getting annoying.

_Knock-knock-knock. Knock._ "Neeeeeee-chan," Amari calls. "Come out and play with us~" His voice has flattened out, sharpened into Tokyo dialect.

Heiji can't see who opens the door, but Amari presses into the doorway -- Heiji hears a heavy metallic click, not loud enough to be a gun cocking, he's guessing the safety's off now -- and a woman asks flatly, "What do you want?"

"Aw, can't we come visit our favorite neechan?" Amari teases. A pause, then, "Oh, wait, nope! You got us. How about... you get to live, and keep Ake-nee's little love nest secret. _If_ we get silence, two weeks there, and a checkup."

"Oh, for..." There's a rustle of movement, all the tension gone from the woman's voice. "What have you idiots done to yourselves this time? Come in."

Campari shifts his grip on Heiji and pushes him into the apartment. ("Hey!") Heiji stumbles over Amari's shoes in the genkan, lifts his head up, and the woman is staring at him with eyes gone wide and rattled.

"What have you _done?_ " she asks.

"Aw, so quick to blame us!"

"It's almost as if she knows us," Campari says. He smiles slightly, knowingly. "However, the question, Shi-neechan, is what have _you_ done."

Shi-neechan? So this is Death. Heiji narrows his eyes at her. She's nineteen, maybe twenty, tall for a woman. Her tea-blonde hair is cut to her jaw and permed, and her clothes -- a dark purple sweater and brown slacks -- look expensive. There's a designer purse on a coat hook, the shoes next to the door are all the same size of women's, all in the same blend of practical and professional. From what Heiji can see of the apartment behind the woman, it's large and airy for urban Tokyo.

Not a mobile assassin agent type like the twins, then, but something very high-paid and stationary. And called Death. And... checkup?

_Straight to the labs, do not pass Go, do not collect $200. The question is, what have_ you _done._

"You made the drug." Heiji didn't mean to say it. Death's eyebrow quirks, and Heiji can't help but add, "The poison. Number 4869." He thinks that's the number he heard.

Campari rests one arm heavy on Heiji's head. "Interesting side effect, isn't it."

Death blinks. "Well." A slightly shaky exhale. "Well. That depends. _Is_ it a side effect?"

"Yup. Fed him the apotoxin myself. Watched him--" And here Amari makes an illustrative gesture, as if compressing a large sphere, "-shyoop! Right down to pocket-size."

Heiji growls.

"Let me get my kit," Death says, turning and leading them deeper into the apartment. It's sparse and neat: gauzy curtains, bookshelves, kotatsu, laptop. A mug of tea's been left next to the laptop, and Amari whisks both of them off into the kitchenette. He returns with a cheap outdoor tablecloth, cotton-backed blue vinyl with tiny brown and white flowers, and spreads it over the kotatsu.

"Medical necessity!" he cheers, and oh _hell_ no. "You promised~" He makes a mock serious expression, all huge puppy eyes and somber pout. "Who knows what the apotoxin did? Maybe it's still working. Slowly eating you away, cell by teeny-tiny cell, and we won't know until you turn necrotic and fall down as dead as a flambéd zombie."

"Or maybe you're still shrinking," Campari adds. "Getting smaller and weaker," and damn, do these guys know how to push buttons or what, "every muscle losing memory until... _diapers._ "

"FUCK YOU NO."

"Alternatively," Death says, thumping a heavy black leather bag down next to Heiji, "The sudden catastrophic loss of mass could've left severe scarring, nutritional deficiencies, metabolic imbalances, free-floating emboli, aneurysms, and that is merely what I can think of off the top of my head. Strip."

... Fuck. Even Heiji can't argue that's not medical necessity. He grumbles under his breath as he peels off the shirt and shorts, spares half a second to wish for underwear, and plops down on the sticky vinyl with the shirt over his lap.

She snaps on a pair of latex gloves and runs through the same thing Heiji's doctor does every year -- cold stethoscope, thump for reflexes, blood pressure cuff, poking a light at his eyes and ears and nose -- then taps his mouth open and peers in. "Feel crowded in there?" she asks. "Any ache about here?" Cool fingers press at the hinge of his jaw.

He'd figured that was the bruising from when they'd knocked him out at the park.

"Don't ever take him to a dentist. He's too young to have twenty-eight teeth yet." Yeah, screw you too, Death-chan. "Unless you'd like me to pull those back molars. He'd be more comfortable afterwards, but there's a risk of infection, and a good chance they wouldn't grow back when he matures once more. It'd be easier to just keep children's painkillers on hand."

She manipulates his joints after that -- neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists and fingers, touch toes, toes and ankles, knees, and Heiji balks when she reaches for the shirt in his lap. "... Ah." Her head tips ever-so-slightly back. "If they take this opportunity to be perverse at my patient, I will take the next opportunity I have to require a core temperature."

The twins are suddenly not looking their way at all.

Death allows Heiji to use one hand to hold the shirt over his privates, while she lifts and circles each leg. "Were you athletic before the apotoxin?"

"... Kendo."

"Then I can't tell if you've been left more flexible than before. I'll need X-rays. And MRI scans," she tells the twins. "Within the week, if you would." Then she gets out a strip of pale rubber and turns her attention back to Heiji. "I'm assuming you've eaten within the last twenty-four hours, so I won't check glucose or triglycerides," she says, more to herself than him, as she swabs the crook of his elbow with wet cotton. She snaps a tourniquet around his bicep, thumps at the cold-wet spot with her knuckles, and then out comes a needle like a freaking lance.

Heiji swears the air blue when she slides it home. She tapes the needle in place and clicks the first vial into the needle's base to break the seal.

"This would have been much easier if you'd delivered him to the lab." Death's words fall like glass and shatter into a sudden, deafening silence.

"... You're fishing." Death watches the blood flow smoothly into the vial, so carefully attentive that it turns right back around into hypervigilant, like Campari's going to blow her brains out with the next twitch anybody makes. After a long moment, Campari sighs, shoves one hand in his pocket and rubs the other through the back of his hair. "You want Gin's head?"

Death goes very, very still. Then, "It's amazing how much I don't hear when the people not saying things are you."

Amari snorts. "We'll bring you his hair. It's not that bad a color, you can knit a scarf. It'll be really stylish."

She rolls her eyes, swaps vials. "Where did you get the idea that I knit?" she asked rhetorically.

Heiji doesn't hear whatever response she gets, because that's when the world greys out. 

When it returns, he finds himself blinking up at a twin who is managing smug, amused, and annoyed in about equal parts. (Amari's warm and deceptively comfortable, his slacks washed downy-soft and his arms firm with muscles.) (Oh good gods he's lying on Amari's _lap_.)

"I'm pretty sure I saw a bodice-ripper cover like this once," Amari tells him. "Add about three miles of strategically-slit frilly skirts, a corset that could put a heaving bosom on a six-year-old..."

"Go choke on a codpiece and die," Heiji replies. This is why he hates getting blood drawn. (He's kinda been dinged a lot in cases. And kendo. And stuff.) Not that it happens every time the vampire docs come after him, but enough that he'd really kinda hoped it wouldn't this time. "And let go."

"Let me think... no."

"I did tell you," Death says, an edge to her voice that hints at impatience. "Not an uncommon response, high adrenaline and a dip in blood pressure, that's all." Slim fingers snap the vial free, press dry cotton firmly over the tip of the needle and slide it neatly out, then she flattens the cotton under a wide strip of tape and folds Heiji's arm over his stomach. "Narita, Hanasaki 3 76-2, apartment 8. Give him some juice and you can let him up in twenty minutes." Then she stands, stripping off her gloves, and leaves Heiji's field of vision.

He can hear the plastic rustle of a very light weight dropping into a trash can, the muffled pat-pat-pat of slipper soles on the hardwood floor, heading towards the front door. A pause, a louder tap of high heels on linoleum, and the deadbolt rattle-thunks open.

Death leaves without a word.

A mug of juice materializes practically on top of Heiji just a moment later, and geez he didn't even hear the fridge fucking scary assassin-silent... um... assassin. Yeah. At least Campari hasn't been a jerk enough to put in a straw.

... He probably couldn't find one in Death's house.

Amari sits him up a bit with a knee in his back, then takes the mug and offers it.

"Yeah, no. Gimme my shorts."

Maybe the threat of core temperature readings still lingers, because Campari simply scoops the shorts up and drops them on Heiji's stomach. Heiji manages to twist into them without either flashing the twins, falling off Amari's lap (aaaaaaaa), or knocking the juice all over everything.

The twenty minutes pass quietly. Amari shifts to the floor pillows, gives Heiji sips of the juice -- (more like he presses the rim of the mug against Heiji's mouth, "spill on purpose and we're sharing the tub", so Heiji drinks) -- and Campari cleans up. When he's done replacing everything, and he's dumped out the dregs of the drink and washed the cup, and they've put on their shoes, the apartment looks just like it did when they arrived, like no one but Death's been in it all day.

"Same deal, stick close or people get shot," Campari says, and they head back out into the busy Tokyo afternoon.

-0-0-0

The apartment in Narita is shabbier than Death's, all the furniture cheap and some of it secondhand, but it's also a little larger. They're only there long enough to drop off the backpacks, before Campari disappears and Amari takes Heiji to a secondhand store three train stops closer to the airport.

Wearing other peoples' old clothes is c-r-e-e-p-y. Most people, older ones usually, think it's psychic vibes. That something has to be new or it'll have the imprint of someone else on it.

Which, well, is true enough. But for most of 'em, it's subliminal. It's the wear pattern and occasional stain -- dribbles of mysterious colors ingrained into the thread at seams and hem -- which make it disturbingly like wearing the ghost of another person's skin. Or something like that, Heiji couldn't really explain it if he tried. But when Heiji's alert... when he's freaking out, or in that zen space where the exact opposite of tunnel vision happens, or on a case... he notices things that would be subliminal for everyone else.

Like how thinning fabric between the legs of a pair of jeans make the posture of a painfully shy kid, trying to be small and invisible with limbs tucked in close at all times. Or how, on other pairs, frayed cuffs match up with ripped holes in the knees: iron-on patches on one pair tell of a mother with the same hurried nature, precise mending on another speaks with a more prim voice, _how many times have I told you to calm down? Stop running in the house. Have you torn those again? Honestly child..._

Amari holds a Masked Yaiba shirt up against Heiji's shoulders. "No logos," Heiji says. This one's still vibrantly colored on cheap fabric, barely worn, _I never liked Yaiba_ and _my relatives send obligation gifts instead of get to know me_ and _I had no one who shared my interests._

Some of those aren't conclusions he should be able to get from a piece of old clothing. There's good reason Heiji carries... used to carry... an omamori.

"Hey."

"Hm?" Amari looks up from where he's checking the tag on a plaid buttondown.

"Do you..." Right, like they won't make him _negotiate_ for it. "Nevermind."

Amari's mouth quirks upward. "Now you've made me a little curious."

"'S nothing." Heiji grabs a random piece of fabric -- a denim-blue romper, almost imperceptibly greener on the back and sides, rough and tumble in the grass -- and checks the fit against himself. It goes on the 'okay' pile.

"It was enough to mention."

"Just drop it, wouldja?"

"What'll you give me if I do?"

And Heiji pauses. The conversation's somehow flipped -- looking at Amari's amusement, he knows Amari's perfectly aware of that, too -- and now Heiji can ask without negotiating for...

Wait, no. "I won't give you anything." He can use their own curiosity against them. Or against Amari. Sort of. Does it count as a weapon if they know he's using it? "In fact, I wouldn't care if you spent hours bugging me about it. But maybe if you promise me an honest answer..."

"Done."

That was way too easy, but he can't see the catch. Yet. And who knows what they'll do if he breaks a deal? Heiji turns away and shrugs, heaves the pile of 'okay' clothes into the cart. "Just wonderin' if you kept the omamori I was carryin'."

"Oh. That. Campari's got it."

Maybe it's failing him as hard as it failed Heiji. Or maybe surviving the poison is the best it could do. "Can I have it back?"

Amari gives him a level stare, eyes gleaming. Then he jerks his chin towards the end of the aisle. "Pick a toy and you can."

"... What."

"Little boys have little toys," Amari says brightly, and Heiji instantly wants to punch him in his 'little toy'. Or his toothy smirk, Heiji's not picky.

He crosses his arms. "I want the baseball bat."

"No weapons, kendo-ka."

Heiji completely fails to be surprised. At all. He stalks over to the sorry little bin, shoves a few plushies and baby toys out of the way, and grabs the first thing that looks like it won't be a complete embarrassment: a plain red yo-yo with a little chip at the edge, wound with a gray-tinged string. It's nowhere near heavy enough to do more than bruise, and that's only if he gets lucky.

"Mm, strangulation. Fun," Amari says, and tosses the yo-yo in the cart.

Heiji tries to kill Amari with his mind the entire way through the next store, where Amari buys socks and six-packs of boys' underwear (thank GOD, even if they are covered in cartoon characters), and in the grocery (rice, dashi, sauce, eggs, root vegetables, coffee, who the hell needs this much chocolate at once?).

Campari's still gone when they get back to the apartment. Amari sets all the bags on the counter, pulls out the rice, and drops it on Heiji's foot.

"Ow!"

"Catch it, then." Amari points to a cabinet by the fridge. "It goes in there."

Subtle Amari is not, Heiji thinks, as he catches and puts stuff away, then helps with dinner for two. He's obviously being kept from investigating interesting features in the apartment, like the door, windows, and balcony.

The collar makes its appearance again after dinner, when Amari plops onto the couch with the tv remote and hauls Heiji in next to him. He clips on an actual leash, threading it and the collar rings with a different, long-shafted combination lock, then switches on the tv and channel-surfs until he finds anime. (Heiji thinks it's a magical girl show, until the violet-gray magical girl pulls out a bazooka and blasts gory holes into the cutesy magical animal.)

The lock sits cold and heavy on Heiji's shoulder.

Hours pass. The not-a-magical-girl show is followed by one featuring goth-loli nuns wielding chainsaws, then schoolgirls with guns. (Heiji is sensing a theme here.) Then it's movies on-demand, and they're most of the way through a classic vampire movie when the lock on the front door clunks.

Amari instantly scoops Heiji up with a hand over his mouth, presses them both silently to the floor, and pulls his gun.

"Just me," Campari says from the genkan. Amari doesn't move. "Hell is boring work," and that brings Amari levering them up off the floor.

"How'd it go?" Amari asks.

"You'd have hated it," Campari replies. "I didn't even have to move the body." Heiji goes cold. They've killed someone already. "He was staking out someplace from atop a crematorium. So just..." He flicks his fingers in a little pushing motion.

"Pop down the chimney and fire away?" Amari pauses, fingertips brushing the lapels of Campari's jacket. "Seriously?"

Campari smiles. "I wouldn't lie to you. Although--" his hand smacks lightly against Amari's, dislodging it from his jacket. Heiji's omamori flips to the ground. "Apparently you'd steal from me."

"Just practice. And I promised it back."

"Good price?"

"So-so."

"You're slipping," Campari says teasingly, and Amari sticks his tongue out and -- Heiji can't quite see what he does, but somehow the omamori puffs into existence and lands on Heiji's lap.

"There you go, one not-particularly-effective lucky charm."

Heiji's going to pay for this, he just knows it. But he can't stop the question from coming out. "Who... who'd you kill?"

Campari slides his arms around Amari from behind, hooks his chin over his twin's shoulder, eyes heavy and assessing. "You actually care about the answer," he says after a moment, as if it's some sort of surprise.

"What the hell makes you think I wouldn't?!" Heiji snaps, and the twins blink.

"Normal," Amari mutters ruefully, barely audible. Then, more loudly, "Right. You'll owe us for this, we'll tell you when payment's due, price is negotiable."

"It's too late to hash out more than that," Campari agrees. Then, after Heiji finally gives one short, jerky nod, he shrugs. "It was an assassin called Irish."

"No tenure and bad at networking, so he wasn't as high-ranked as he could've been." Amari leans into Campari, almost purring. "Damn smart, though. Catching us all would've been one heck of a promotion, and he had the brains to do it. So." _Pop_ goes the gun-hand.

So. Another killer, then.

He really doesn't know what to think about that.

-0-0-0

_Click-click-click-tap._

_Click-click-click-tap._

_Click-click-click-tap._

_Click-click-click... kachunk._ The combination lock comes loose in Heiji's hands. He freezes, listening -- nothing. The tiny room he's been given is silent, nothing but his breathing and the nearly subliminal hum of power and plumbing in the walls. He can't hear anything from the twins' room.

Slowly, so slowly, he turns the lockbox over, freeing the U-shaft, and eases the chain links off one-by-one. He's already wrapped a corner of the sheet around the headboard, so the chain doesn't rattle against the bars there. Then he slides the lock's shaft out of the collar rings.

He's loose.

(He wants the collar off so badly he can almost taste it. Freedom, freedom, mwahaha... only the collar is evidence. Rrgh.)

Carefully, Heiji slips out from under the covers. The floor doesn't creak under his weight, his feet falling silently on the thin bedroom rug. Decision time. Risk the apartment, where he doesn't know the layout, doesn't know where to step silent and what might get knocked over... or risk the window, which might be too high?

He's got a bedsheet and weighs practically nothing. Window it is.

A careful examination of the window shows no telltale sensors around it, and he hasn't seen an alarm system in the apartment -- those usually have number keypads next to the entrance, after all -- but he still bites the inside of his lip as he eases the window outward as far as it'll go, poking his head through to see what he's got to work with. 

Flat stucco, a single window below him, and then the building butts right up against a steep-sided canal. No wonder they let him have a separate room: if he survived the fall, he'd drown. Can't swim too well with broken bones, after all.

However, there's a drainpipe bolted to the corner of the building, and that might... _might_... be in reach.

(The twins probably don't think it is. They have to be expecting him to sneak through the apartment. It's far too obvious a trap for them not to be awake and lying in wait. But Heiji has to try.)

Heiji climbs up onto the narrow windowsill, holding onto the frame, and presses testingly into the gap. Exhale, try again. He's lucky he was a thin little kid, and returned to that, but he still can't - quite - fit.

He slides back into the room and examines the window's hinges. The locking mechanism is on the lever bar at the bottom, and the screwhead is visible.

The desk drawers provide a wide variety of neatly organized office supplies, including a letter opener. (The twins can't know about this. It's not theirs -- they're more the 'slice open letters with their own stabby knives' type -- and they would've taken it if they'd found it.) Lucky~

It takes several minutes, inching the screw free a quarter-twist at a time, but eventually the screw falls silently into the canal far below. And now Heiji can wriggle out, and... not reach the drainpipe. He grabs onto the window itself, leans out again, and scrabbles at the rough wall. He needs just a few more centimeters...

He slithers back into the room, pulls the sheet off the bed, and scrambles back into place. Looping the sheet around the window, he can lean out considerably further. One hand on the drainpipe, let the sheet take his full weight, scramble-kick against the wall in a fiery scraping of knees and toes, and he just manages to catch the pipe with his other hand and get both feet on the bracket before the sheet falls free and drifts away.

After that, it's easy as anything to monkey down the pipe. The pavement, when he lands two-footed with relief rising in his throat, feels like grit and sandpaper and freedom.

Heiji bolts into the night. The streets are deserted, here in residential Narita, but the airport's close enough that all the kobans should be manned around the clock. He'll find one, get help from the officer, the twins will surely not risk attracting the notice of the cops to get him back.

Finding a koban is more a matter of instinct than anything else. Better-lit, wider, downhill: each street Heiji turns onto brings him closer to the center of activity, closer to where it makes sense to put services.

Still, he nearly runs right past it when he gets there. Across the street is the distinctive sign, KOBAN, glowing red over a single lit window on a narrow, two-story building jammed between two larger office blocks. Heiji darts across the road (jaywalking but who cares?), and by the time he's reached the sidewalk the officer is hurrying out.

"Kid, kid what are you _doing?_ " he asks, dropping to one knee and catching Heiji by the shoulders, half-lifting him out of the road. His eyes go wide as he spots the collar, the scrapes and dirt on Heiji's hands and legs, the man's T-shirt serving as nightwear.

Heiji shoves at the cop's grip. "Inside, _inside_ , I need help--"

The man's left eye explodes in a shower of blood.

A split-second later, Heiji hears a sharp crack, as the cop slumps to the ground at his feet. The back of his head is gone, gore splattered across the sidewalk and koban windows.

Shot. He's been _shot_. Heiji spins -- _no, no, it can't be, they can't have_ \-- as Amari melts out of the shadows behind him. The gun, barrel heavy with a silencer, drops to the twin's side.

Amari's eyes are flat. "Bad puppy."

-0-0-0

They leave Amari handling the scene, and Campari carries Heiji back to the apartment in silence.

Heiji's stomach feels cold and cramped. If it'd been an icy silence, or a stony silence, or some sort of emotion at all eminating from Campari, he's sure he'd be terrified. As it is, Campari is utterly blank as he carries Heiji through the empty streets and into the apartment building, and Heiji is so far past terrified he doesn't have a word for it. Shock, maybe.

The apartment is dark when they enter it. Campari doesn't bother turning on the lights in the hallway, simply bumping the door closed behind him and entering the bathroom. He hits the light switch with his elbow, bright white light blazing painfully into Heiji's eyes, and sets Heiji down on the sticky-cool linoleum.

His face shows no signs of life as he wets a washcloth one-handed, crouched before Heiji. "'You fight, you yell for help, you try to run off, we start shooting,' is not a one-time deal," he says quietly, the words falling as gentle as cherry petals in still air, as blood drops off a blade. The washcloth scrubs at Heiji's face, icy and soapy, and comes away streaked red.

More red is streaked across Campari's shirt, over his shoulder and the right side of his chest. Except, Heiji realizes, it's transfer from his own shirt, which is sticky-wet across his front, the officer's blood splattered across his face and chest.

Heiji starts to shake uncontrollably. Fuck fuck fuck, he can't stop it, he can't hide-- "You set me up," he bites out, teeth chattering.

"And you took the bait," Campari replies levelly. He folds the cloth over, scrubs at Heiji's hairline. "So now there is a family who thinks their son ran away. Left his post, emptied his accounts, and flew to a foreign country to start anew." Campari may as well be reciting the weather report, and it's somehow more unnerving than if he'd pretended empathy about it. "They'll never know what happened to him," Campari muses. "Perhaps they'll soothe themselves with the idea of him bumming around tropical beaches, perhaps they won't. But they'll spend years... decades... the rest of their lives slowly dying of hope." His voice changes, rises to a more womanly pitch. "'Maybe they'll find him today. Maybe they'll find him tomorrow. Maybe they'll find him by this birthday, by this Obon, by this New Year's...'" His voice drops back to the empty register, dead eyes landing on Heiji once more. "But they never will."

Then Campari's mouth quirks into a sharp, piercing, _knowing_ little smile. "So. Will we have to do this again?"

There's really only one answer. Unless and until Heiji finds a way out, there's only one answer he can give. "... No sir."

"Good boy."


	2. Chapter 2

Day Two:

Heiji's finally been allowed to change out of the bloodied shirt, when a twin grabs him from behind and slaps a thin cloth over his face. He has just long enough to recognize the sickly-sweet smell before he blacks out.

He wakes again with a raging headache, only to find a little travel clock shining a cheery _21:43_ in his face. His back is sore with the peculiar numbness of having lain on a cold floor for a while, but he can feel a thin sheet wrapped around him, a pillow under his head, and -- he moves gingerly, metal rattling against porcelain -- handcuffs around his ankles.

Slowly, he raises his head, and lifts the little clock like a flashlight. Yup, handcuffs, two pairs of them. One bracelet from each is snug around his bare ankles, while the other bracelet is snapped around the end of a chain. The chain snakes around the back of the toilet, underneath the flexible whatever-it-does pipe attached to the wall, so Heiji is effectively chained to the toilet.

Great.

Shining the flashlight-clock around further reveals only a large bottle of water and a much smaller one of children's painkillers. Heiji checks the smaller bottle: it holds exactly one dose. The water bottle is unopened, not that Heiji trusts that one bit -- he's heard of drugging unopened drinks, can't remember how it works -- but if the twins want him drugged they can do it themselves. Or swap out the painkillers for something nastier.

Oh well. Bottoms up. He pops the pills -- thankfully, they aren't the chewable kind, which are nasty as hell -- and gets through a quarter of the water bottle before his stomach twists.

He swallows hard (if he throws up the medicine, he doesn't have any more, and his head is killing him). Okay. Now what? Locked in the toilet, not a sound from the apartment -- he's gonna guess both twins are gone -- and nothing to do but think...

_They'll spend years... decades... the rest of their lives slowly dying of hope._

Heiji shoves that away, and kicks the following three thoughts after it -- _fucking obvious no-lubed mindfuck_ and _that's what my parents are going through_ and _the worst mindfucks are all fucking truth_ \-- and flops back onto the pillow.

_That's what my parents are going through._

_Shut the fuck up, brain_ , Heiji mentally yells at himself. _It's not the same fucking thing at all, I'm alive ain't I? And I ain't being raped or cut up for kicks._

_They don't know that._

Heiji imagines whacking all those thoughts with a kendo stick and stuffing them in a lockbox in a bank vault at the bottom of the bay. Then he kneels up, the chain rattling as he settles himself on the pillow (he'd rather have a tatami, but the pillow's fine, better to have a too-soft perch than a too-hard too-cold one), and begins to meditate.

Kendo's good for a lot more than swordcraft, after all.

Slowly, the cold cubicle disappears. So does the pillow under his legs, the sulky sloshing in his stomach, the pounding headache, time itself...

From somewhere outside the blankness, a door slams.

Heiji's eyes pop open right when Amari pokes his head into the small room with a merry, "Morning, sunshine!" He flicks the light on, blaring bright white in Heiji's face, and drops a plastic grocery bag in the nearest corner. "You doing okay? Chloroform make you sick?"

"I'm fine," Heiji said flatly.

"Great. Fold up that sheet, wouldja?" He kicks it out of the way with one slippered foot, opening the door fully, and tosses the pillow outside with one hand. The other's looped around a bucket, which rattles as Amari enters the bath cubicle. Heiji skitters out of the way, wedging himself between the toilet and the wall.

Water runs loudly as Heiji halfheartedly folds the sheet up into a small bundle. It's sort of pointless, it'll need to be washed anyway after being on the toilet floor, but it's something to do until they unlock the cuffs.

"Much better." Amari plunks the bucket down next to Heiji, sending hot water sloshing over the edge, then crouches down with the bottle of shampoo and grabs for the plastic bag. He upends it over the bucket, and a loosely-knotted bundle of thread falls out. There's an odd bit of reddish-brown latex on the unknotted end, and then Heiji recognizes it as a human scalp.

_They really did it._

He gets the toilet seat up just in time to vomit.

 

Day Three:

Temperatures have risen and tempers shortened as the day wears on, and now, with shadows lengthening and the highways seeing the first inklings of afternoon rush hour, Campari walks Heiji firmly through the jostling crowds of downtown Tokyo.

It's the first time he's been let out (hauled out) of the apartment since the shooting. Heiji's hand, the one that isn't clasped tight in Campari's, is cold from nerves. He can almost see the shape of the gun under Campari's shirt, even concealed as it is by an open vest. Every single person walking past is a target.

(This very morning, Amari had cheerfully shown him a small article buried in the depths of the local news site, "Narita Officer Goes Missing". The article itself had mentioned the man being traced to the airport, and passing off the case to -- pardon, "cooperating with" -- the police in another country.)

A mother with two whining children hustles past Heiji and into a soft peach-pink storefront. Heiji barely gives it a glance -- Hello Kitty is decaled on the window, white shutters and baby-pink arches around it -- and then they pass a flapping blue vertical flag and turn down a narrow alley. This side of the building hasn't been painted, is concrete with the usual drainpipes on one side, and an older wood-and-plaster building on the other side.

Near the end of the alley, there's a steel fire door. Campari tugs at the wires up near the top, fiddles with the latch, and they enter the building without tripping the alarm.

It's a plain service corridor back here, cinderblock and exposed ductwork. Campari spiders up the parallel walls, taps at a couple panels and brackets of the duct, then shimmies forward to a round vent and unscrews it. It leaves a gaping hole in the ventilation system, and -- as Campari jury-rigs a strap with his shoelaces -- Heiji's pretty sure he sees where this is going.

"Hope you aren't claustrophobic," Campari says.

Yup, he knew it. Heiji glowers at Campari, who just quirks an amused little smirk at him before scooping him up like a puppy and clambering up into the duct. Heiji can't see a damn thing -- it's a tight fit, plain metal dim with what little light is coming from the vent opening towards their feet -- and then Campari wriggles further forward like a snake and the vent goes completely dark with a faint clang.

Vent cover plus shoelace strap thing plus dark now equals somehow Campari's pulled the cover back up after them and is holding it in place, probably with his foot. (If he manages to not drop the vent for however long they're going to be in here, Heiji will officially be impressed-intimidated to all heck.)

(He's actually sort of feeling that right now. Something about the way Campari's laying against him, it's like being against the belly of a panther, one dozing on a tree branch and perfectly ready to pounce anything that looks tasty and gets in range.)

(... Heiji is not entirely sure _he's_ not tasty...)

Heiji wakes from his doze when Campari moves. The vent cover falls with a reverberating clang, and Campari slithers them out of the vent like a snake, landing in a crouch curled around Heiji.

Air. Heiji sucks in a deep breath. He hadn't quite realized just how _close_ it had been inside the damn thing, not until now. (He is damn lucky he's not claustrophobic, wouldn't bet on coming out of this without developing it if the twins pull the duct stunt often.)

Campari lets go, letting Heiji stumble into freeing, empty space, then turns on a penlight and aims it at the ceiling. The softly-reflected light is much easier to see by than aiming ahead at the floor.

"Let's go." Campari leads him down the hall, and the first door on the right is another fire door. He aims the light at it, repeats what he did however many hours ago when they first broke in, and the door opens into another short, pale hallway.

This one has faint stripes in the wallpaper, gilt-framed pictures washed out to gray in the dim light, and a couple of tiny crystal chandeliers hung on the ceiling. Campari opens the first door, again on the right, and shines the penlight in. Then he ushers Heiji into the small room (it has to be small, the outside wall is barely three meters from the fire door they used to get in here), shuts the door behind them, and turns on the light.

Everything is blinding pink and gold for a moment.

Heiji winces and squints. Through the blur, he can see a reclining chair (white plastic and pink vinyl upholstery), a camera on an arm suspended from the ceiling, a screen in the corner, a lead-lined apron with tiny cats printed all over it...

It's a dental X-ray room.

"... You brought me to the freaking _Hello Kitty dentist?_ "

Campari smirks. "Amari will be so jealous."

 

Day Five:

Heiji's flat on his back on a gurney, rolling through bustling hospital hallways and feeling nowhere near as sick as the makeup makes him look, when a middle-aged nurse with arms like a gorilla's falls into step next to Campari-the-unremarkable-orderly.

"I got the old bitch!" she crows gleefully.

"Already?!" Campari asks, and _oh_ the nurse is _Amari_.

"Yup!" Amari drops a clipboard next to Heiji on the bed, and does a little conga shimmy. "No more Anokata, no more Anokata~"

"Stop that! Calm down, go poison a few patients or something--"

"No!" Heiji very nearly sits up, and Campari hastily presses him flat again. "Come with us. Just don't go--" Another nurse squeezes past, and Heiji casts her a glance that he hopes comes across as nervous and curious instead of _please someone anyone help me_ because that will get people killed. It must work, because the nurse vanishes around a corner and out of earshot. Heiji fixes his eyes on Amari again. "Don't go killing patients!" he hisses.

Amari strokes Heiji's bangs off his forehead. "Boring," he says, smiling comfortingly for any onlookers. "It would be just a little discomfort, maybe a nice panicky crash or two, oops that was one milligram too many."

He's _serious_ , messing with medications and torturing sick people is just a _joke_ , a bit of entertainment. Heiji is going to strangle him -- wait, can't maim them, rrgh. "I'll make a deal with you later if you don't go hurting patients now."

"Aw." Amari ruffles his hair. "You're such a sweetheart. I'll even take that in the spirit it was meant in, okay?" Heiji has only a moment to wonder what the heck he means, before Campari pushes him through the doors into the MRI unit and they leave Amari behind.

It's a good ten minutes before Heiji clues in that Amari could've agreed to 'now' and said anything past three seconds was 'later'. He groans inside the machine.

"Stay still, please," Campari replies blandly over the intercom.

 

Day Seven:

They've just finished breakfast when Campari holds up a damp handkerchief in one hand and a bottle of sleeping pills in the other. "Pick one."

Oh, nice of them to give him a choice. Not. "Neither."

"Not an option. We're not putting the tv in the toilet for you."

"Or books!" Amari calls from the hallway, huffing past with an armful of bedding.

"And no food, either."

"That'd be _disgusting_ ," Heiji blurts out at the thought. _Food_ in the same room as the _toilet_ , ew, no.

"Exactly." Campari rattles the pills. "But we won't be back til tonight, so it's either sleep or starve." Heiji folds his arms, raises a brow -- starve is a lot higher on his personal list than sleep is, especially drugged sleep -- and Campari meets his eyes levelly.

After a long moment, something shifts in Campari's gaze, brightening. "Or," he begins, "you _do_ owe us two points." _Two?_ Heiji thinks, before _omamori_ slots in behind _not hurting patients_. They'd answered his question, who'd they kill, after he got the protective charm back. "So if you promise to behave, and not try to pick the locks or break the lead... or start a fire to have an excuse to do that," Campari adds sharply, "we can leave you on a longer leash."

"Deal."

"Hey, Amari, get the long chain!" Campari calls, standing and setting the handkerchief and pills aside.

Five minutes later, Heiji's clipped to one of the ceiling fixtures by his ankle, the chain puddled in silvery loops over the floor behind him, watching as the door thumps shut behind the twins. And, just like that, it's like all the air's been sucked out of the apartment.

It's so _quiet_.

He starts walking around the apartment, more to hear the chain skittering faintly behind him than anything else. The twins have one heck of an eye for measurements: Heiji can get a hand on the balcony doors at one end of the apartment, easily reach the fridge and microwave with a little slack left over, and if he stretches his leg backwards and hops those last two steps, he'll be able to use the toilet without bringing the light fixture crashing down.

A crash like that would bring the neighbors out in droves. Whoever the neighbors are. And then they'd call the police and it would be sirens and rescues and who knows what the twins would do if they came back to that?

(He can very easily picture them poisoning the building's water supply. Or worse. Whoops, my hand slipped, gee I wonder what was in that vial I swiped from Death-chan? A little cholera, a little meth, a dash of ricin to kick it up a notch...)

The worst part is that he doesn't know if he's being paranoid or not. Of course it's paranoid, they haven't done anything they haven't promised to do first -- from shooting people (like they're doing now: continuing to plow through thirteen agents including their grandfather, and random innocents if Heiji escapes) to getting the hair of that Gin guy for Death. But then again, there was the bit about poisoning patients for fun. Then again, they hadn't actually done that and could've just been messing with Heiji's mind. (It's working.) Then again...

This would be so much easier if they would just stick around, so that Heiji could distract them from their more random murderous impulses.

And he knows exactly what _that_ means.

He flops onto the couch, one arm pressed over his burning eyes. "Damn Stockholm."

 

Day Eleven:

"-- _don't like his bone density results, so be generous with the calcium in his diet. I'll email you a nutrition guide, try to use it for at least the next six weeks._ " Papers rattle on the other end of the line, sounding almost metallic through the speakerphone. Death goes on, " _Slight deformities in the sinus cavity make him susceptible to ear infections, so keep an eye out for colds; they'll spread right up into his head very easily. The carpal and tarsal assemblies_ work _, but the bones didn't shrink uniformly. Don't use wrist or ankle restraints any more than you have to... which I should not have to tell you means_ never."

The twins grin sheepishly at each other over the cell phone, and Amari leans over and pulls the soft, decorative red ties off Heiji's wrists (the price of getting a bath alone this morning, with the door firmly shut).

" _And that's it for immediate problems. He's in remarkably good health, under the circumstances._ "

"Excellent," Amari purrs in English.

" _Whatever you're thinking, I don't recommend it_ ," Death says flatly. ("Boo," Amari mutters.) " _But then, that's true for everything you think is 'excellent'._ " (This time, Amari's mutterings are a quieter, "The elfling knows too much, mathter.") "... _And one more thing_ ," she says, in an oddly reluctant rush.

Campari twitches slightly more upright at that. Heiji does, too. "Yes?" Campari prompts.

" _I only just found this out_ ," Death explains, every word dragged out by its scruff. " _Rye's FBI._ "

Campari's hand shoots out, stabs the phone off. Amari's already rolling over the back of the couch, and Campari shoves Heiji to his feet and into a couple of stumbling steps towards his room. "Three minutes to fill your backpack. Go."

Heiji bolts. FBI, one of their targets is FBI, presumably one of their targets who knows about this place (hadn't they said _Ake-nee's little love nest_? Is Rye her boyfriend, then?) -- if they're trapped, it'll be a hostage situation ending in a shootout, there's too many ways that can go wrong, there are innocent people in the building -- Heiji pulls open drawers and starts stuffing his cheerful Domo-kun backpack with rolls of clothing, underwear first.

(He'd pretended not to be impressed at how much they could fit into a drawer by rolling up everything. Now he knows why they'd insisted -- it's so much easier to bug out when everything packs so tightly and doesn't unfold in your grip.)

"Sixty seconds!" Campari calls, and Heiji bumps past him in the hallway to grab his toothbrush. Fifty, forty, shrug the backpack on, twenty-five, out to the genkan, stomp into sneakers and velcro them shut, five, four, three, two, one.

Amari grabs his hand, and they walk calmly out the door and into the afternoon crowds. Though 'crowds' is really giving the passersby too much credit: almost everyone who isn't at work has gone to seek air conditioning or waterparks, or is vacationing up in the mountains. What's left is mostly late housewives and shift workers running errands before the groceries run out of everything but natto.

Two train stops later, they make a whirlwind run through a convenience store. Pay-as-you-go phones are cheap and plentiful, though they're clunky and ugly as heck, and Heiji can't help but make a face at them. Amari picks out three cheap-end models -- two plain black, at the second-cheapest price, and one bright blue kiddie phone -- and shoots him dire glances as they head up to the registers to pay.

"Afternoon, did you find everything you were looking for?" the clerk asks on automatic. His eyes skip over Heiji, as usual, and settle on the trio of phones with a flicker of surprise. "Is this all together?"

"Yup," Amari answers, tossing an ID atop the phones -- for one Tsuda Satsuki, Heiji sees, before Amari gestures at Heiji to put something on the pile. "Well?" he asks as Campari adds his own ID (Tsuda Hideri) and several minute cards. "They can't sell you a phone without an ID for the registry. You might be some terrible criminal," he teases, and the clerk grins with a stifled snort of amusement.

Heiji glowers at Amari, and suspects it comes across as a pout.

"He really is one," Amari confides to the clerk. "Willful destruction of property, managed to break both our phones at once. So he's getting his own to break today, and gods help him if he doesn't learn to respect the tech, right?"

"Oh, man, I hear you," the clerk agrees. "I've got little cousins. Sometimes I think kids that age can't take two steps without bashing something to pieces, you know?"

Heiji can feel his face heat up as he goes hunting in his pockets. _Fucking condescending... bet his cousins wouldn't break things if he didn't leave his junk lying out on the floor to trip over, it's so obvious he's a slob who still expects mommy to pick up after him, you don't get wrinkles like that if you hang your clothes up..._ Somehow, Heiji is unsurprised to find a beetle-shaped coin purse in his back pocket. It has a pack of Yaiba tissues, a few yen, a grubby plastic chibi charm, and an ID for Tsuda Taki inside it.

The clerk scans the IDs in, cashing them out while the cards run through the machine, and bags the phones up. "Have a good day, now," he says cheerfully. "Don't break any more tech, kid!"

Fuck you too, asshole.

Campari takes the bag and breaks into the kiddie phone's packaging. Out comes a ten-minute card, the phone beeping musically as he thumbs in some longass number off the back, and then he's bringing the phone up to his ear. "Moshi moshi," he says, perfectly amicable and polite, and then he switches to English. "So, how suicidal are you, Shi-neechan?"

Heiji shoots a look at Amari, twists his hand subtly in the twin's grip. "What's he mean, suicidal?" he asks in the same language.

Amari shows no hint of surprise that Heiji knows English. "It means Rye's off the target list, and Sherry might be on. If she's told FBI anything..."

"We don't want them on our asses, Shi-neechan," Campari says. "Any agency's bad enough, but large, stable governments? Which we can't topple with a few well-placed bullets? Think this through, Sherry. A small government would have twenty people ahead of you on the kill list. But someplace like America? _The informant's the top target._ "

"We were designed for covert assassinations," Amari agrees (for Heiji's benefit, since there's no way Death -- Sherry -- can hear him over the phone like this). "They can hound us to the ends of the earth -- and they _would_ , governments always need people who can do the dirty work -- but they can't block us from finding the leak. One way or another."

Campari hangs up, dropping the phone into a trash can. "Good news, she hasn't said a thing."


	3. Chapter 3

They spend the night in a high school's clinic, have a late breakfast at a coffee shop (Amari disappears for twenty minutes, returning with an Ito-Yakado shopping bag), then cross that suburb to a public storage facility. Amari inputs a code -- VTY1412 -- and they pull up the door in a rattle of orange metal slatting to reveal a sleek black motorcycle with sidecar, an entire wall of sealed storage bins, and a wooden folding screen. Amari slides a couple of bins off the shelving and vanishes behind the screen, while Campari stows their bags away and begins checking the engine.

Heiji edges around to the other side of the motorcycle. It's _beautiful_ , a Kawasaki Ninja maybe two, three years old (with an engine he's damn sure none of them are old enough to legally operate), and it's a fucking shame someone stuck a sidecar on it. Even if it's a pretty little bullet of a sidecar.

... Even if it's a pretty little bullet of a sidecar with a suspicious line in the oh-shit handle. And a few almost invisible marks in the dashboard. Heiji peers under the chassis, and oh yeah, more suspicious lines, right where it would be extremely useful to have extra wheels and some electronic breakaway bolts if... say... the motorcycle needs a bit more manuverability and run-away-ability than having a sidecar would allow.

Heiji would lay ten-to-one odds that the sidecar's modded out with an engine and steering of its own. No bet that one of the twins gets to ride in the sidecar and Heiji gets stuck on the back of the drop-dead gorgeous bike.

Amari steps out from behind the screen, deftly weaving new long black hair into a braid. He's done something subtle to himself, a slight curve to his hips and narrowing of his posture, and manages to look female in an untailored rock concert shirt and jeans. "Your turn," he says, digging a pint-sized jacket and jeans out of the shopping bag. A helmet follows, ocean blue with a little flip-down space visor, and he piles them up in Heiji's arms and gives him a light push behind the screen.

There's still a bin open back here, flatpacked wigs in plastic bags, but it's not Heiji's job to clean up after them. He changes quickly, and comes out as he's strapping the helmet on. They've dragged the bike outside, and Amari's in the sidecar, checking through a small purse. Campari quickly frisks Heiji. He gets the beetle wallet and empties it of yen, then tosses it like a basketball back over the screen. (The wallet's too light to tell whether it hit the bin or not. Heiji is guessing it did.) Then Campari hands Heiji the yen and a ladybug wallet. Heiji glances inside -- this ID is for Ei Fuyuta -- and sticks them in his jacket pocket as Campari shuts up the storage unit.

"Gonna need a toilet break before we hit the highway?" Campari asks, swinging onto the bike.

"No."

"Okay. Just tap three times on my left if you do." And with that, Campari hauls Heiji up behind him, flicks his visor down, and revs up. They ride away from the storage facility in style, the twins' sweet sweet ride purring under Heiji.

It's going to be a long trip.

-0-0-0

It's the second day in a row that Heiji's been put into the short-sleeved gi and dark hakama of an archery student, and taken to a dojo in Nagoya. Yesterday, they were there for scarcely five minutes, nipping in and out between classes without doing more than glancing into the empty firing range.

Today, there's a single man inside. He's meditating in a splay-kneed seiza pose, sidelong to the open wall, and his gaze is cool like an autumn breeze when it passes over Heiji.

Amari bustles back, wedding ring flashing as he puts a hand over his mouth. Her mouth, given today's disguise. "Oh, I beg your pardon!" She bobs a quick, polite bow, nudges Heiji's shoulder with the armor equipment bag to make him bow too. "I was just dropping Fuyu-kun off early, will he bother you? He can stay quiet until class, he has a book."

The man's eyes drift shut once more. It's acceptance enough.

"Be good, dear," Amari says more quietly, turning Heiji briskly to the side and digging into her purse. "Oh, hold still, your face is dirty--"

"Kaasan--!" Heiji yelps obediently, hands up to bat at the expected handkerchief.

It's not a handkerchief she pulls out, of course. A silenced shot cracks through the dojo, felling the man on the spot, and Amari tucks the tiny gun away as Heiji falls sullen and silent once more.

_Which agent is it this time?_ Heiji wonders, long past surprise.

Amari steps out of his prim heels and pads across the polished wooden floor. "Hm." He nudges at the man's head with one nylon-covered toe, tipping it into the blood slowly puddling out the back, then steps carefully around the spreading liquid to take up his fallen bow and arrows.

_Plock_. It's clearly an awkward angle, the bow is taller than Heiji and not meant to be shot at the ground near one's feet. _Plock, plock._

"I think that's enough," Heiji says. Amari ignores him, shoots again -- this time the arrow sinks deep into the man's throat instead of his head.

Amari glances over his shoulder, eyes stark staring blue with the pupils down to manic pinpricks. "But it's Obon." As if that's an explanation. "We have to give our ancestors all the respect they're due on Obon."

Right, because filling a corpse with arrows is so respectful, what, is he an offering to the grandfather they were so gleeful about kill... _oh_.

Heiji's eyes drop to the man's ruined face, and his mind lays the living features over it. The resemblence was there, barely. It's easiest to picture in terms of expression -- Campari's had something similar in his face a couple of times, something between 'blank' and 'placid' when he's just waking up. Centered. Ready like a cat, like a warrior, to be attacked. Something learned at Grandfather's knee, no doubt.

"Well." Wild guess, this is Daddy. Heiji tamps down on a small flare of hysteria (they killed their grandfather happily, why _not_ their dad?) and crosses his arms. "Look at you, bein' all _attentive_." 

Amari's eyes flash. "Well," he responds with the same scorn, "Figured Calvados should do _one_ halfway interesting thing with his life." He makes to toss the bow aside, then pauses and sets it down gently, well away from the spreading blood. "You're right, we've disrespected the dojo enough." _So_ not what Heiji had meant. "Let's go, then."

Heiji pulls the equipment bag over his shoulder, and trots along next to Amari as they leave. Amari's movements flip back to the fussy brisk mother before they hit the street.

"So. How many more?" Heiji asks. _How long til it's over?_

"Just two, Fu-kun." Amari smiles, pats his shoulder. "Pisco and Kir. End of the week, all right?"

Heiji can't help it. He has to ask. "And then no one else, right?"

For a long moment, Amari doesn't answer. Heiji's heart sinks. _Of course. Of course there's always more. It's like a fucking junkie, it never ends._ "You realize we only have the one marketable skill," Amari finally says.

"No you don't." Heiji's seen it. "You could go into... into theater or something. Voice acting. Racing. Security. Freaking private eye work, no one would ever notice you're following them--"

"Boring."

"But you _could._ "

Amari shoots him a sharp, quelling look, and Heiji falls silent. "We could," Amari says, flat and mild. "Do all the paperwork. A public education. College. Birth certificates, medical records, guardianship papers. But even we can't fake actually having been there." Something flashes through Amari's eyes, and his voice shifts to a different woman's. "I taught at Minami High for twenty years, and I never saw either of those boys in my life." Switch, and now it's younger, brighter. "But you must've heard of the library ghost, if you went to Aokeida Elementary! It wandered the school every night! We were all so scared!" His voice flips back. "Caught out by _amateurs_ , ugh."

"But..."

"Drop it, Heiji."

When they get back to the new apartment -- a claustrophobic studio that's more costume racks than floorspace -- Campari is sitting on the folded-up futon, frowning at the tv over a box of Chinese takeout. He gives them a cursory glance, then leans over and hits the volume with the clean end of his chopsticks.

"-- _ssing newscaster Mizunashi Rena, last seen in this clip from Morning Live 7--_ " A pretty, wavy-haired woman is interviewing a middle-aged man silently in the inset box onscreen, captioned 'Tokyo Newswoman Missing'.

"Well fuck. She's early." Amari kneels -- not bothering to change out of his mother disguise -- and digs into the plastic bag next to Campari, peeking into boxes. A box of pale, vegetable-studded fried rice gets plopped into Heiji's hands; the tangy scent of pepper follows, as Amari pounces a plate of still-steaming chili shrimp. They both ignore Heiji edging into a seat on the corner of the futon. "Same old argument?"

"Not sure," Campari replies, poking at his eggplant. "Disappearing this quick... it's concerning. Either she's more in the loop than we thought, or someone tipped her off." He flicks the chopsticks up and out, as if tossing something away. "But we can't do much about that now. Did you check where Kir lived?"

"Haido-cho," Amari replies. "Quiet little place, cheap. Decent area for the cost."

Campari sets his dinner aside. "Then that's where she _won't_ be. Do we have anywhere near there?"

"Several, a couple that Shi-neechan doesn't know about, and one's a two-bedroom flat. Should be safe enough."

"We'll move in as soon as we have the Yamaguchis done, then."

_The who?_ Heiji wonders.

On second thought... considering the twins' track record with murder, he's not sure he wants to know.

-0-0-0

The Yamaguchis turn out to be their new identities. They also turn out to be the 'new tenants' in a corner apartment overlooking Tokyo's route C2, not a single line-of-sight through the windows from anything larger than the high mast lighting along the freeway. 

Heiji's arms are piled high with bedding and he's trotting up the stairs when he meets the next-door neighbor-hostage. (He can deduce enough about the downstairs neighbor-hostages from the perfectly audible sitcom that floated up through the floors last night. It had been popular some twenty years ago, and played until eight-thirty when both it and the light spilling over the walkway a story below had cut out. Elderly people, probably two of them since the light and television had been in separate rooms and turned off at nearly the same moment, and very hard of hearing.)

"Hello," Heiji says to the man blinking down at him. He can't see very well over the stacked sheets -- there's a yellow-and-black striped visor over close-cropped hair, a round and expressive face currently displaying a surprisingly open amount of curiosity, muscular arms left bare by an equally yellow tank top, if he has any sense of color coordination he'll be wearing black shorts -- but it looks like he's interrupted the man's habitual jog.

The man makes a rueful face, bows slightly, and then signs a greeting.

_Oh you fucking bastards_. Heiji tips his chin up over the sheets, smiles, and waves his fingers as best he can.

The man smiles, then waves goodbye. Heiji watches him go -- hopefully it's wide-eyed 'curious kid doesn't quite know what deaf is yet' or something -- and then stumps up to the apartment. He slams the door open (it's childishly thoughtless, that's in character, and the twins sure as heck can't argue he's going to disturb the neighbors), kicks off his shoes, and drops the bedding just inside the open door on the right.

Campari's putting away dishes in the kitchen when Heiji storms in. "Can you be any more obvious?" Heiji snaps. "Seriously -- corner apartment, deaf guy next door, practically deaf old folk downstairs, can you get any more 'no one can hear you scream'?"

Dishes rattle -- Heiji knows it's on purpose -- as Campari sets them inside a cupboard, and then Campari turns, settles his hip against the counter. "I can't do that, Hei," he says in English, voice mockingly deep and vaguely robotic and oh for fuck's sake Heiji didn't mean to mangle movie quotes first.

"ID's on the table," Campari adds, hauling a box of pans up and over to the counter. Three manila envelopes are laying where the box was. The top one's unopened, stamped 'Yamaguchi Hei', and Heiji takes it in slightly shaking fingers.

(The other two envelopes are marked 'Yamaguchi Kanei' and 'Yamaguchi Amato'. Kan-nii and Ama-nii to him, Heiji would bet.) Inside his envelope, he finds various papers -- notarized birth certificate, vaccination records, a single school report card with high marks, death certificates for Yamaguchi Ajiro and Sayaka (car accident), some scribbly crayon drawings, and photographs that Heiji knows have to be photoshopped. The pictures show a much younger him with people he's mostly never seen in his life, presumably parents and sickly grandparents, and there's one absolutely horrifyingly innocent shot of him and the twins. They can't be more than twelve, grinning up at the camera, and he's a cross-eyed infant lying between them on a blanket.

One of them must've gone back to Osaka sometime during the killing spree. Maybe that time they drugged him in the toilet, or the time they tried to and compromised with the long chain. Broke into his house, when it had to be crawling with police and possibly reporters (he knew they were insane but this is crazy), paged through the old photo albums and took snapshots, if they didn't just swipe randomly out of the albums (but that would leave tracks, not that they've been all that scrupulous about wiping out forensic evidence of themselves)...

Heiji stifles a shiver and upends the envelope. Letters, custody papers, New Year's cards, birthday card, ID. Yamaguchi Hei, age seven. Match it up with the birth certificate, then the school report card, and... "You're putting me in school."

"Yup."

"Elementary school."

"Yup." Out comes cutlery, knives flashing in Campari's hands. "Term starts tomorrow."

A sarcastic _nice of them to let me know_ wars with _great, more hostages_ , and Heiji declares his sanity to be Switzerland and looks back at the papers. Death certificates mean... "My parents died near the end of last term," he deduces slowly, "and... since my closest living relatives are too old to handle me, I got placed with you. My... cousins?"

"Bingo."

"So no one will be surprised if I'm a moody little bastard."

"Aren't we thoughtful?" Campari's grin looks like it belongs on something with a lot of fangs. Or Amari. "You can thank us later."

"Uh huh." If later is never, sure, he can pencil them in for sometime then. "And what do you guys do that you can afford me? Kids don't come cheap, and you're not disguised to look older than college."

"Twenty-one, to be precise." Campari flatpacks the box, scoops up the other two envelopes, and heads into the main room. Heiji follows, watching Campari toss them into a small filing cabinet in one corner. The area's going to be an office, Heiji can tell, but right now it's the cabinet, a pair of folding chairs, and a long cheap folding table leaned up against the wall. "I'm in programming, and Amato does security."

"... You're shitting me."

"Language." Campari taps Heiji hard, right on top of his head. "We also take classes online, but only when we can afford them, and not this term. Bereavement in the family, you know." The bastard's eyes shine very convincingly, except Heiji knows better and also he's not even trying to sound anything but smug.

And so it is that Heiji finds himself dropped off at Beika Elementary bright and early the next morning, facing twenty bright-eyed and curious new hostages. "My name is Yamaguchi Hei," he says, hands clenched in a deathgrip on the straps of his little red school bag. "Pleased to meet you."

The entire class, ungrateful little Kanto-bei heathens that they are, burst out laughing.

-0-0-0

Heiji spends the week trying not to get into fights on the playground over his _perfectly normal and much better than your stupid weirdass Kanto-bei_ dialect, getting a soccer ball kicked at his head in the park because Campari is a dick and doesn't trust Heiji to play anything like a kid, and ducking The Intrepid Trio.

In fact, as he climbs the stairs to the apartment, maybe he should be calling them the Stalker Trio. He can see the big one behind the mailboxes on the corner. Seriously, what the fuck, he hasn't been the least bit nice since day one... okay, yeah, he could be meaner but they're just little kids, he'd have to be a real dickweed to be actively mean to them.

He slams the door shut behind him, knowing that they're probably all running gleefully for the building right now. (He can practically hear the giggling and the " _we got him, he didn't notice us at all, that's gotta be his place_ ".)

"AMA-NII," he shouts, dumping his school bag somewhere in the hallway. The main room's only got Campari in it, curled up in a corner of the couch and reading a book. "Or you. You'll do." That gets Heiji a glance, one raised eyebrow, and Heiji points behind him. "Your twin made a mess. Fix it."

Campari's other eyebrow shoots up. "Really."

"He drove me to school that first day on the motorcycle. And now--" _Rat-a-tat_ knocking at the door, three distinct rhythms centered roughly around the lower half of the wood. "-- _that_. They won't leave me alone! It's been 'Yamaguchi-kuuuuun, can we come see the motorcycle? How fast does it go? Do you get to ride it lots? Can we go for rides?' _all week_."

" _Yamaguchi-kuuuuuun!_ "

Gah. It's the littlest one, the girl. Yoshida Ayumi. She of the killer puppy eyes.

Heiji dives behind the couch. "I'm not home! You're not a psychotic killer! And you're not giving them a ride on _anything!_ "

Campari curls over the arm, peering down at Heiji. The bastard is laughing on the inside, Heiji's sure of it, somewhere under all the bemusement. "Hm." He slides a bookmark into his book and lays it aside, then gets up off the couch and pads silently to the door.

There's half a second of silence, and who knows what Campari's face looks like (Heiji is not checking, because he's not home, really, honest) but it's apparently not unfriendly enough. All of a sudden it's like someone kicked a cage of birds, the really colorful little ones that never shut up.

"Is Yamaguchi-kun here?"

"Are you Yamaguchi-kun's brother?"

"Do you drive that motorcycle? Can we see it?"

"Do you talk funny like on tv too? Yamaguchi-kun does, it's really neat!"

"Can Yamaguchi-kun come out and play?"

"Is this Yamaguchi-kun's house?"

Heiji is not looking. He's not. He is going to sit back here and hope Campari doesn't shoot them. Oh gods what if he _does?_

Campari chuckles, soft and warm and way too tolerant. "I'm Yamaguchi Kanei, Hei's cousin," he says, and the kids fall quiet. "My brother and I share the motorcycle, but he has it out right now. Hei speaks Kansai-ben and is very proud of it, I'm sure he'd be hurt if he heard you calling it 'funny'. And he is feeling shy right now--"

"GO DIE IN A FIRE," Heiji yells before he can think.

"--which makes him a little grouchy, but you guys can come in and have a snack if you're hungry."

_Don't do it don't do it don't do it_ \--

"YAY!" the kids shout, and then there's a series of thumps as they run inside and kick off their shoes.

\-- _dammit, you stupid trusting brats!_

"I'm afraid we don't have much," Campari says as the kids all tumble into the living room. "Tea, juice, water... what do you guys like?"

As the kids answer, Heiji edges towards the corner of the sofa. Maybe he can keep an eye on the poor brats while they're here, not that it'll do much good, but maybe... just for his own peace of mind...

They mostly look okay, all big eyes looking around the room. Tsuburaya Mitsuhiko's eyeing both the tv and Campari's computer setup. Kojima Genta's grinning towards the kitchen. And Yoshida... has spotted him. Heiji ducks back behind the couch.

_Stop being such a moron, Heiji!_ he thinks furiously at himself. _If you make them suspicious--!_

A cup of tea descends into his vision. "Here," Campari says cheerfully. He's leaning over the couch, grinning. The cup wiggles a little bit. "Come on, it's not poisoned."

Oh har dee har har. "... freakin' comedian..." Heiji growls, but he takes the tea.

It's weak and watery, lukewarm like Campari didn't heat the water properly or let the tea steep very long, which is of course because he made it for little kids. Heiji makes a face, but slurps it steadily down for lack of anything better to do.

He's halfway through the mug when the door clunks open. "Tadaima!" Amari calls. A moment later, "Oh? Who's this?"

"Hei's prospective friends," Campari answers cheerfully. ("What's 'prospective'? Can you eat it?" Kojima asks.) "Mind if I show them the motorcycle?"

_Say yes, please say yes, get them out of here and send them on their way_...

"Nope, go ahead," Amari says. The kids cheer in stereo.

... Wait. Stereo? He can only hear two of them. Heiji pops his head out again just in time to see little Yoshida lift her head to peer soberly up at the twins. "Can I stay here?" she asks quietly.

The twins exchange glances, then shrug. "Sure," Amari says. "If you don't mind me. I was just going to watch a little tv," he adds, pointing towards it. Heiji hides again before anybody can look over and spot him.

"I'll try not to bother you, Yamaguchi-nii!" Yoshida replies happily. (Ugh, no, she can't call either of the twins '-nii', it's cute and friendly and they are not cuddly friendly teddy-bear people.)

The upholstery thumps against Heiji's back as Amari plops down onto it, pillows bouncing, and clicks on the tv. He flips through a few channels quietly, settling on some documentary ("-- _after Peruggia, thousands of people came to see where the Mona Lisa wasn't, thus propelling her into global infamy_ \--"), and then the remote clatters onto the kotatsu and silence falls once more.

Heiji finishes his tea in two long swallows, then sets the mug aside and sighs.

... Someone's looking at him.

He whips his head around to spot Yoshida peeking around the couch, practically in his face. "Hi!"

"GAH." Heiji jerks away, knocking over the mug.

Her face falls. "You really are scared, aren't you?" she asks, though it apparently doesn't occur to her to back off and give him some space.

"I'm NOT scared," Heiji grumbles against his knees. It won't sound the least bit believeable, even though it's sort of true. Except that his stomach twists at the thought of any of these kids crumpled lifelessly on the ground. How the hell is he going to explain 'go away' without hurting her feelings or saying too much? "... 'S been a bad month."

She breathes a little 'oh', then -- of course, stupid of him, she's taking it as encouragement -- asks, "What happened?"

"Ojouchan." Amari's voice is flat and makes Heiji twitch violently, then Yoshida's head disappears from view with a squeak. _Oh gods he grabbed her_. Heiji scrambles out to see... she's perfectly fine. Amari's got a framed photograph out, the plain black one with the funerary ribbon over the corners: the picture of Heiji's 'parents'. "Maybe you should go home."

Her eyes go huge and bewildered. Amari makes a _shh!_ gesture, finger crossing lips, then jerks his head pointedly towards the door.

Heiji edges away, but before he can return to the false safety of the couch, Yoshida pulls herself over to him with the big sympathetic eyes on full blast. "We'll see you tomorrow, Yamaguchi-kun. Okay? And... and I'm really sorry."

What's he supposed to say to that? Put away the anime shoujo earnest-eye-rays-of-doom, kid. (He's going to have to suffer this look at recess for weeks, isn't he.)

"All right, rugrat, up we go." Amari lifts Yoshida up by the back of her pink shirt, carrying her like a kitten over to the genkan. "We'll see you around, okay? Sandals on, go find your friends--"

"Bye, Yamaguchi-kun!"

Yeah, whatever, stay away. "Bye," Heiji calls grudgingly in response.

The door thumps shut. "Ah, _finally_ ," Amari crows. Footsteps cross the floor, then the couch bounces again. "I have been _so bored_ , Hei, you have _no idea._ "

"Yeah, well, you ain't getting any sympathy from me," Heiji says, coming out from behind the couch and leaning over its arm. Amari gives him a mocking pity-me pout from the cushions below. "Your idea of fun is shooting people."

Amari bolts upright, bristling like a cat. "It is not! You take that back!"

Heiji sticks his tongue out. "Nope. Seen it with my own eyes."

"You've only seen us killing agents," Amari snaps back. "And that one cop," he adds piously. "That was _work_. It's like taking out the trash, you don't want trash piling high in your house but taking it out is no fun at ALL."

"Yeah, sure, you just keep telling yourself that." _Maybe it'll keep you from killing anybody else. But wait, you're freaking murder junkies!_

"Kan-niiiiiiii, Hei-kun doesn't believe me!"

Campari has somehow managed to open the door silently behind the noise made by Amari and the ignored television, and now he shuts it behind him and crosses over to them. "About what?"

"Killing! It's the most boring thing you can do with a person, right?" Amari curls into Campari's chest, one arm angled back to card through Campari's hair. "He thinks we're just all yay-murder-spree."

"It's all he's seen," Campari replies diplomatically. "But it is deadly dull."

Amari snorts at the pun, and Campari's mouth twitches upwards as if to say 'yeah, I did that on purpose'. "No imagination," Amari informs Heiji, one finger ticking chidingly back-and-forth, amused violet eyes pinning Heiji to the spot. "It's all just," the gun-hand pops, "bang-dead, and then you have to find a new toy."

"Wasteful," Campari murmurs. "Inefficient."

"Just because you _have_ a plan to kill everyone you meet," Amari agrees, "doesn't mean you should _use_ them." He sighs explosively, sagging in Campari's arms. "So what should I _do?_ "

Campari smirks into Amari's hair. "Take up knitting."

"Ass!" He shoves them over, and they go tumbling across the couch and onto the kotatsu. Something clatters underneath them, and suddenly the tv starts blaring.

" _With his mantra of 'harm no one', Interpol Thief Kaitou 1412 staged 134 heists, making off with a total of 152 gems worth 38,725,000,000 yen. Amazingly, he managed all this despite announcing his thefts in advance to police and victim alike, often in the form of elaborate riddles--_ "

Amari shoves Campari off and rolls to his knees, crouched half-over the table. "Wait, wait--" White reflections flash across his eyes, his gaze pinned to the laughing magician flying across the screen, a montage of news and security footage gone slightly fuzzy with age.

"What is it?" Campari asks.

"I," Amari says, a grin slowly spreading across his face, "have an _idea._ "


	4. Chapter 4

It's the next Tuesday when Amari bounces onto the couch next to Heiji, toppling him over and cheerfully brandishing a piece of fine cardstock in his face. "Done!" he crows, laughing. "Here, check it for me."

Heiji flails, wriggles out from under Amari, and 'accidentally' kicks him in the hip joint for good measure. "Check what?" he asks, once he can breathe instead of being squished. The card thwaps lightly into his hand. "Why?"

"If it takes you more than fifteen minutes to figure out," Amari answers, "I figure it's good enough." He makes little 'go on' gestures with his fingers. "So? Read it."

The card's got a verse on it, and is signed with a grinning caricature in a black top hat. It's clearly Amari's stupid Kid Homage project, which has only one thing going for it and that's that it's keeping Amari occupied.

_Let's begin a little homage..._  
Just a lark, mind:  
In the night of the dark,  
That saturnine visage appears. 

_\- ^_O_

"Huh." Heiji, unfortunately, knows both twins' senses of humor too well by now. "Did you just call them all birdbrains?"

Amari grins like a shark, but simply lifts one finger and ticks it back and forth. "Clock's ticking, little man."

"Fuck you." Heiji frowns at the note. "Okay, what jumps out at me?" Aside from the fact that Amari is sprawled practically on top of him expectantly, and could not be more obvious about wanting to hear Heiji's train of thought unless he flat-out said so. "'Night of the dark' doesn't sound grammatical, and it's hella obvious, so it's on purpose. Reverse things?" Go line by line, see how it fits. "You haven't started this stupid homage idea yet, so you can't be ending it, unless you mean it's gonna be a big homage and taken damn seriously. Birdbrains line can't be flipped. Can't reverse saturnine or visage, except with something like sunny or mercurial -- which you are, yeah, but like the damn big serious homage thing it doesn't say anything about the target itself. But you can flip 'appear' to 'disappear', so... 'that saturnine visage disappears'. You're stealing something with a face on it." Heiji punches lightly against Amari's hip, in the same hopefully-sore spot. "It had better not be a person, I swear I will kick you in the face if you kidnap someone else."

"Aw, are we jealous?"

"You wish. Gimme the computer." The one Heiji means is the netbook sleeping on the kotatsu. It's good enough for google, and that's all he needs. 

Amari leans half-off the couch, stretching out one long arm to scrabble at the plastic corner with his fingertips. He scoots a little more, pushes with his foot ("Ow," Heiji says flatly, as the jerk's heel not-so-accidentally gets him high on the leg), and the little computer comes skidding over to the near side of the table.

Heiji clambers over Amari's legs and fires it up. Restoring system session... Windows screen... searching for wifi... connecting... stupid little thing takes forever. "Bootup time doesn't count."

"I'll allow it this once," Amari replies lazily. "The police will lose a day or two thinking I'm just another crackpot--" (Heiji coughs out something that sounds a lot like 'damn right!') "--drawn out of the woodwork by the documentary."

Finally. Google. Hm, what to search first. Well, there's one notable adjective in there... "Saturn," Heiji mutters, typing. Kid 1412 stole gems, so he adds, "stone." Up come the links. "Blue sapphires won't have faces... planetary alchemy. Onyx. Lead, tau, Saturday -- duh -- indigo, way too many plants and shit to narrow down, Capricorn, blah blah blah, let's wiki onyx." All hail Wikipedia. "Favored in cameo carvings, ain't that _interesting_." Scroll down to notable historical pieces, Heiji thinks, because let's face it, Granny's old brooch ain't 38-billion-yen rap-sheet material. "Portland vase, Goblet of Ptolemies, Great Cameo of Gaul... Gemma Januculum." And Capricorn covers most of January in the Western zodiac. A quick check, and... bingo, the Gemma Januculum was found on a Roman hill sacred to Janus, namesake of January.

One more Google search turns up traveling exhibits visiting Tokyo. _Gotcha._

Heiji turns to smirk at Amari. "You're going after the Gemma Januculum on display at the National Museum of Western Art."

"When?"

"Saturday." Duh. "Night of the new moon. 9:41 pm, if you flip Kid 1412's number like the rest of the note."

Amari's eyes flick over at the DVD player clock. "Sixteen minutes." His smirk gentles. "Not bad for my first try."

Heiji flicks the note back at him, aiming for the eyes (Amari blocks it, of course). "Too bad none of them will appreciate your genius," Heiji says, dripping with sarcasm. "Considering they won't believe the note."

"Ah, but I have a solution for that!" Amari jackknifes up off the couch and bounces over to the balcony doors. He slides them open, letting in the low thrumming of traffic and an incongruous bubbly warble.

_Pigeons?_ Heiji thinks, following Amari outside. But it's not pigeons: Amari's got his lips pursed, his throat bobbing as he coos into the open air. Then, in a bustling flap of feathers, a black bird lands on his outstretched hand: a dove, with undertones of emerald green and bright violet banded around its neck. 

_When the hell did he get that?_ "New pet?" Heiji asks.

Amari ties the note to the steel band on its leg, then leans out over the railing and launches it gently into the air. It flutters a few times, then banks sharply and vanishes around the corner of the building. As far as Heiji can tell, it's heading downtown. "Borrowed her from a breeder in Itabashi."

"And does the breeder actually know you've borrowed his bird?"

"Nope." Amari shoves himself up off the railing. "I think that'll get their attention. Not too many nutjobs out there who'll steal a pigeon and wire up the windows on police headquarters."

"... Wire the windows?"

"Pretty pointless to send the bird from _here_ ," Amari's finger tips towards the apartment, then back out at the world in general, "if I'm gonna have to be _there_ to let it in."

"You are really overthinking this."

"No such thing."

 

-0-0-0

 

The first heist doesn't make front-page news. It's a short article on page three of the Culture section of the newspaper, more about the theft of the Gemma than anything else -- Kid Homage is only alluded to as 'unsubstantiated threat letters from multiple sources', and the matter is mostly forgotten.

Except in the Yamaguchi household, where Amari makes a grand mockery of mortal offense over the breakfast table, swears not to return a single item until he's been recognized as a proper threat to valuables and sanity alike (Heiji asks why they've still got the Gemma, in that case), and flounces off to prepare for more heists.

The second note takes Heiji half an hour to figure out, partly because he is not now nor will he ever be a musician, and the third is a complex mathmatical rubric that gives a fake riddle when 1412 is calculated into it, and gibberish when all the other possible numbers -- heists, stolen items, cash value -- are. (The right riddle takes three days to crack, and turns out to need 1412 in binary format. Heiji hates Amari from the freshly-dug abyssal depths of his heart for that shit.)

Right after the third heist (a jade hairpin carved with autumn leaves), the newspapers finally wake up and take notice. It's about time, too. Heiji is getting tired of waking up with the damn rocks tucked into his bed like teddy bears.

"I hope you're happy now, 'Kid Homage'," Heiji says, flapping the opened paper over Amari's cornflakes. "It's not the front page yet, but you've got a headline. Now will you give the shit back?"

"Hm. I did promise to, didn't I?"

"You didn't promise when," Campari points out, because he's an ass in his own sneaky pedantic way. Heiji takes a vindictive swipe at his godawful coffee, and Campari yanks the mug out of the way and shuts up.

"Well?"

Amari gives the ceiling a considering look. "Halloween," he finally says. "There's a full a couple nights before." His mouth quirks upwards. "It'll be wonderfully dramatic."

Sure enough, Amari is true to his word. The fourth notice goes out Friday afternoon, delivered in a red lacquered box full of black plastic spiders. He's taken pity on them this time -- well, taken pity more on Heiji than the cops -- because the note itself is just a series of fairly understandable numbers.

_201210291863_

The 29th sees Heiji eating leftovers as an early dinner while Campari rattles about on the computer like he's firing a machine gun. Then he stacks his dishes in the sink and runs hot water, leaving them to soak (he's burnt a bit of sticky sauce onto the rim), and wanders back out into the living room.

"Make popcorn," Campari says.

... Heiji does not want to know. But it's something to do and he does like popcorn. So he heads back into the kitchen, pours a measure of popcorn into a brown paper bag, folds it over a couple of times and sticks it in the microwave. He adds a small dish with a spoonful of coconut oil, because fuck if he's going to try messing with the stove at his height, and sets it going.

They've got green tea powder and sugar in the pantry, and if Campari doesn't like matcha sugar popcorn he can make his own. Heiji mixes the powders together, gets the oil out and lets the popcorn have a few more minutes, and then pours it all into the bag and shakes it as violently as he still kind of wants to wring the twins' necks.

Popcorn goes into a pair of oversized plastic bowls, and Heiji returns to the living room. The tv's on, blank and streaming blue light across the couch and Campari's computer corner. 

Heiji drops off one bowl next to Campari's elbow, nearly on top of the remote, plops onto the corner cushion farthest from Campari, and asks, "So what are we watching?"

A few more keystrokes, then Campari picks up the remote and hits a button. The tv lights up with nine scenes that look oddly... like... security footage...

Strike that. It _is_ security footage. Heiji nearly knocks the popcorn off his lap.

"What are you _doing_?!"

" _We_ are watching Amari." A screen blips to a different view, this one of officers clustered around a pedestal with a large pendant on its bust. At this resolution, Heiji can just barely make out the spider encased in amber (which would be a clear, shocking red in color video). One man, older and in plainclothes rather than a rank-and-file uniform, is blustering and gesticulating wildly. Heiji's glad there's no sound.

Something clicks, and suddenly the speakers are filled with static and tinny voices.

"-- _cking Kid Homage thinks he's going to get past us tonight, he's got another think coming! It'll be handcuffs and a good_ \--" Heiji finds himself slightly impressed at the man. He knows how to whip the law up into a frenzy.

"Does Amari know you've bugged the place?"

"Yup. But he's not using it. Makes things too easy."

" _Sure_ it does." Heiji can see at least three squads of officers stationed in view, and who knows how many aren't in sight of one of the camera feeds Campari's hacked? Easy, hah. Though they are just Tokyo cops, it'd be way harder in Osaka...

The DVD player clock blinks over to 7:03. A few seconds later, the white digits in the corner of all nine views blink to 19:03... and they all explode into white smoke and chaos at once.

" _Where is he? Get him! Grab him! Grab the necklace! OW!_ "

Eight of the screens change to different views of the billowing smoke, quickly clearing as bright laughter rose over the yelling. With a sweep of one arm, the smoke swirls away as if pushed, leaving only Kid Homage perched on a chandelier high in the center of the room.

"Good evening, gentlemen!"

"Goddamned idiot imposter thief--!"

"Now really, Inspector." The gem pops up in Kid's hands, spider flashing, then vanishes up one dove-gray sleeve. "It's _homage_ , not _impersonate_. Among other things, my sense of style is much more up-to-date." He tips his hat rakishly lower. "As are... my little tricks. Bye!"

The screen flashes painfully white. Heiji flinches into the cushions, one arm flung up over his eyes, then tries to squint past them. Nothing. Even if he could've seen anything in person, the cameras have been flash-blinded too.

Slowly, vague blurs reappear on the screen, flickering in and out as the cameras over-adjust for light levels. "... Did he escape?" Heiji asks.

"Not this early," Campari replies. His fingers fly over the keyboard, _takatakataka_ , and the blurs on each section of the screen change. Empty room. Running police. More running police. Front lobby. Stairs. Even more running police.

 _Takatakataka_. The screens start flickering faster and somehow more coherently. One starts following a single squad down a hallway, switching from one camera to the next on their path as they pass out of view. Then another does. And another.

"This isn't right, they're too well-organized," Campari mutters, teasing order out of the mess Amari has made of the security. "They should still be flying blind, lost in the-- _fuck_." He abandons the keys, goes for something that starts clicking, and the ignored speakers begin to switch from one set of yelling to others. "There's someone controlling them."

Heiji glances over, but Campari's intent on the tv, eyes fierce and alive. "Someone's _supposed_ to be controlling 'em," he says carefully. "You know, the boss? Inspector guy?"

"Not that moron," Campari shoots back. "Someone _smart_. Perceptive. Outside the chain of command, or he'd be in charge instead-- aha." He drops the little box, then returns to the keyboard. " _Gotcha_."

On the screen, Amari's coiled around a tied-up young blond.

 

-0-0-0

 

This is not what Saguru had expected his day to turn out like, when his father had introduced him to the newly-formed Kid Homage Task Force this morning.

_The inspector had a cloud of blue-tinged smoke wreathing his head, the stench of terrible cigars as sour as the expression on his face. A moment before he'd been all smiles and noisy deference, which had fallen away the instant the door shut behind Father._

_"All right, hotshot. Let's see what you're made of." And he'd pointed Saguru to a small table at the center of the room, empty except for a little box set where it could be seen from any of the officers' desks. "There's the Kid Homage notice. Crack it."_

_Why waste time making him jump through such hoops? Surely as a nepotized 'hotshot' interloper, they'd have relegated Saguru to filing paperwork and making coffee... unless they hadn't figured out the note yet._

_Saguru stepped up to the table. Red box, not an unusual size -- it looked to have been taken from an old bento set, or perhaps a rustic sake set, the sides were thick and the cavity a bit smaller than Saguru's palm. The spiders could be gotten at any toy or convenience store in bulk packages, and were increasingly common as Halloween decorations gained popularity. There was a slip of cardstock in the bottom, a line of numbers that were clearly a date and time, though why he'd listed 7:03 pm as 18:63... hm, his previous three heists had been calculated to coincide with the exact minute of the full or new, but tonight's exact full was at 4:51 in the morning. 451 plus 1412. Right. As for the box and toys..._

_"Lacquer is a tree resin, as is amber. As the box is red rather than golden, the target is a piece of red amber with a spider inclusion. I believe there is such an item on display at the National Museum of History and Science."_

_Silence fell painfully over the room._

_Fortunately, that pained silence hadn't stopped the squad leaders from swallowing their egos -- and diplomatically stuffing Nakamori's own ego down his own throat -- and setting Saguru up with a command-track radio transciever and responsibility as the contingency handler if and when everything went south in a swirl of chaos._

_Unfortunately, Saguru had only managed to be in control for some five minutes before being gassed._

He comes to dangling between two marble support columns, mouth stuffed with fabric and his own voice snapping out all the wrong orders in his ear. (Ngh, should've known this Kid would be as skilled with voice mimickry as the previous one...) His back's warm with something heavy... no. Something _living_. And there are gray-clad arms over his chest. The Kid Homage is draped over his back, the stolen transciever in hand.

"--Hakuba out." He clicks the headset off, then starts to giggle. "You awake there, sunshine?"

This Kid is far, far more personal than the previous one. Kid 1412 had teased and stolen clothing and committed all sorts of hijinks, yes, but he'd always done them at a certain remove, exquisite formality and physical distance part of the persona. He would never have touched a captive more than was necessary, much less called anyone 'sunshine'.

It's something to remember for the profile, later.

"Mmph."

"Wonderful." Kid Homage nuzzles against Saguru's cheek, clearly uncaring of whether or not he leaves DNA evidence. "I just wanted to congratulate you on the excellent decoy." He draws out the Blood Spider Amber from inside his coat, then slides his free hand into Saguru's collar. "Very well done. It looks almost real." Suede-clad fingers tug at the clasp, then the real necklace slips loose under Saguru's shirt. "In fact, I don't think I'd have noticed if the line of your jacket hadn't been oddly bumpy. Well, no, I lie. Cubic zirconia just doesn't have the same properties as real diamonds," and he slowly draws the true necklace free.

It's not a particularly stylish piece. Made for the wife of a Polish magnate, it's a mix of Victorian ostentation and the macabre: the spider amber is surrounded by a ring of small diamonds and topped with an encrusted fob, much the way the Hope Diamond is. The amber seems dark and almost grubby by comparison.

Kid Homage hooks his chin over Saguru's shoulder, examines the true necklace closely, then makes a little tossing motion to make it vanish. The fake necklace gets slipped into Saguru's coat pocket, over his heart.

"So." Out comes a new piece, the jade carving from the last theft, and Kid starts patting Saguru down for more pockets. "I," he purrs, "had to change my escape plans for you. Did you know that?" The ornament goes into a front pocket, deft fingers wrapping it in Saguru's handkerchief to protect it from his phone.

"Ooh, an e-reader. Hattori-kun will like that," Kid says, finding the device in a large pocket Saguru had sewn in opposite his watch pocket. Saguru hisses through his gag -- he likes that ereader! He has the entire Sherlock Holmes series, plus the best of Agatha Christie on there! Not to mention a lot of fascinating non-fiction, Tolkien, Baum, and six of the seven Narnia books. (The last one, though the apocalyptic sequence is exquisite, is otherwise just a travesty of genre and theme.) 

... And who is Hattori-kun?

Kid flips the e-reader's leather case open and swaps it out for the Gemma Januculum. Both gem and device vanish, having switched places. Then Kid brings out the last of his three heists, a silver ring with a rare 12-ray star sapphire, the stone nearly black, and waves it teasingly before Saguru's eyes. It looks like a little piece of outer space, staring into the sun's gravity well through a capsule window.

Then Kid pushes Saguru's long coat aside, and sticks his hand in Saguru's front trouser pocket. Saguru (barely) manages not to squeak as Kid deposits the ring... and then doesn't remove his hand. "You're so _cute_ ," he says. "I could just keep you forever and call you George. Though I already have a George. Fred, then. Two peas in a skull." His free hand ruffles through Saguru's hair. "I wonder how you'd look as a redhead?"

Saguru wrenches himself to center, keeps his breathing steady. Kid Homage is starting to sound more than a bit deranged. _I am tied up and_ \-- Kid's hand squeezes at his hip from inside his pocket, a little huff of laughter in his ear -- _being all but molested by a lunatic thief who is unraveling even as we speak._

Thumping at the door sends Kid tense and still for a split second. Then he nips at Saguru's earlobe ("Later, Sunshine!") and his weight vanishes from Saguru's back. A moment later, the doors burst open, and a squad of police swarms through.

"Hakuba-kun!"

Instant tactical formation, the squad fans out with eyes scanning the corners, nightsticks at the ready. Several duck up behind columns, then spin around to the far side in case someone was hiding there. "Clear!"

"Clear!"

"Clear!"

Then, and only then, do they cluster around Saguru. "We got worried when you didn't check back in after a few minutes," one of the officers says, as another takes quick snapshots of the knotting and condition Saguru's in.

"Thank you." Saguru exhales in faint relief as another officer, at the photographer's nod, simply cuts him down, two officers steadying him as he stumbles on half-numbed feet. "We may have greater concerns than all of this, however. I need a computer."

"Command hub or police car?"

"Whichever's closest. Or least occupied."

They bring him to the command hub. Which is really the security camera monitoring office, but there's enough space for a line of laptops and radio equipment behind the museum guards' seats, and most of the extra equipment is currently unmanned. Saguru takes the nearest laptop

Typing 'Hattori' into the search box brings up a long list of entries, which Saguru quickly scrolls through and back up. The second entry's the only missing person's report.

Hattori Heiji. Age seventeen. Last seen, case officer, additional notes. Call Osaka police chief Hattori Heizo.

Seventeen. Saguru's age. Saguru lets out a shaky sigh and pinches the bridge of his nose. "Could someone call for Nakamori-keibu? I'm afraid I don't have the authority to make this call on my own."

It goes worryingly quiet after the older officer calls Nakamori on the radio. Not that noise would stop Saguru from thinking, but the silence is tense. The two officers with him saw the same entry, after all.

They're probably thinking that Kid Homage might be this Hattori Heiji. Saguru almost wishes he could suspect so... but he knows the references Kid Homage was mutilating.

Fred and George, Rowling's redhead twins. Two peas in a pod, also twins, though Saguru looks nothing like the photograph of Hattori Heiji... but if they're twins in the skull, in the head, then they may be of similar intelligence and ability in Kid Homage's view. And then there's the pet George...

Lennie had killed his puppy by pure accident in that book, through rough handling. The line's resonated through Anglophone pop culture for decades, with similar themes of careless treatment of captive animals.

Saguru tries not to think about Kid's playful manhandling and complete lack of personal space boundaries. But Hattori Heiji's been missing for three months... what would Kid Homage do with that sort of familiarity?

The door crashes open, and Nakamori storms in. "What's all this about a missing person?" he growls. Saguru turns the laptop towards Nakamori, and watches the man loom over the screen, puffing on his cigar stub. After a long moment, he exhales a cloud of smoke through his nose. "And you haven't made the call... why?"

"Erring on the side of caution," Saguru replies. "I wouldn't want to infringe upon your authority."

Another huff, this one without smoke, and Nakamori shoves a phone over at Saguru, grumbling under his breath.

"Thank you, sir." Saguru dials. Long distance, home phone number, it's horribly rude but chances are the police chief won't be at work at this hour. Though he might be at the bar with his fellow high-level officers, which is still a common practice, but the file doesn't include a cellular number. (Saguru hopes the man's home. He doesn't want to have to deal with the wife. Even if she's a levelheaded kind of woman, which is hardly guaranteed, the file doesn't grant her any authority. It would be a bureaucratic mess if Saguru said anything, and cruel to her if he didn't.)

The line clicks, and a gruff, deep voice says, "Moshi moshi."

Whew. "Is this Hattori Heizo-san?"

"Yes."

"Your name's down as a required contact for a missing person's report? Hattori Heiji?"

"Yes." The man's voice has tightened, overcontrolled. "He's my son."

Saguru interlaces his fingers before they can start to shake. His son. Good lord. "Sir, I'm Hakuba Saguru consulting with the Kid Homage Task Force. I think you need to witness my debriefing."

 

-0-0-0

 

"WOOOOO that was fun!" Amari spins on his heel, arms spread, and falls onto the couch, the cushions bouncing and springs thumping in protest. Yanking Campari down on top of him, he presses his twin into a deep, open-mouthed kiss. "Mmmwah! I actually got cornered, can you believe it? _Me!_ And he was so pretty, Aniki, you should've seen him--"

Campari smirks. "I hacked the cameras."

"Cameras!" Amari scoffs. "His eyes are amazing -- I'm going to have to layer contacts to impersonate him -- and they burn when he's detective-ing. Like Hei-chan's."

"Leave me outta this," Heiji mutters. "And pipe down, I'm tryin' to hear the debriefing." His father's supposed to be there.

He can see Amari pull Campari closer, out of the corner of his eye. "He was _so freaked_ ," Amari purrs. "I could tell. It was _wonderful_."

"Shut up already, geez, and _get a room_."

Amari lightly thumps Heiji in the head with his foot. "Shush, pet. And tell me how far they've tried to speculate."

"I'd love to, but I _can't hear_ \--"

A second thump knocks Heiji's jaw shut, and Campari answers, "They've delayed the debriefing until Hattori's helicopter arrives from Osaka. I don't have any eyes in headquarters, but they should be holding it in Nakamori's office, so we'll be able to listen."

"And record?"

"And record," Campari echoes warmly, a lilt of fond amusement under his voice.

" _I've taken the time to type up a transcript of the encounter to the best of my ability_ ," comes over the speakers, and Amari makes a tiny happy sound that isn't a squeak and shushes them both with some wild hand-flapping.

Heiji doesn't really get what's so interesting about this guy. If his voice is anything to go by, he's smug as all hell, and damn does he speak uppity fancy Japanese for a foreigner.

Papers shuffle quietly, and then the slight 'pay attention now' cough is unmistakable as being shot through the heart. " _This is very thorough_ ," Heiji's father says, making Heiji's eyes burn and the world waver at the edges, _"but it's nothing I could take to the judge, so to speak. Care to explain your conclusions?"_

 _"Operating on the hypothesis that Kid Homage is a man of dizzying intelligence, as indicated by the complexity of his messages and strategic abilities? It's already apparent that Kid Homage doesn't make stupid mistakes,"_ Blondie answers. Heiji glances over, and... yup, that's a ridiculously good pantomime of swooning, for all that Amari is flat on his back on the couch and using his twin as a blanket. Blond-and-fancy continues, _"Some criminals will drop names by accident when they're upset, and many with mental problems have very little control over what they're saying. Kid Homage, however, shows none of the characteristics of either. He was far too coherent and concise -- were he not aware of his words, there would have been repetition, profanity, broken-off sentences as he catches himself or careens onto a different train of thought. There was nothing of the sort. In fact, the entire monologue reads almost as if it was scripted:_ Portrait of an Unhinged Psychotic, _if you will."_

"He's got _you_ pegged," Heiji mutters. Amari smirks at him, all teeth past Campari's shoulder.

 _"Which, to my mind at least, means that he meant to tell us he is involved with someone named Hattori."_ Blondie pauses significantly. _"Sir, when was the last time a suspect gave up the names of his accomplices without being pressured? Without even being under_ arrest?

_"Kid's Hattori cannot be someone the police are unaware of. He also cannot be a criminal, or under suspicion of such, as then he'd likely be an accomplice and therefore Kid would not pass on his name. If he were an officer, Kid would have used the correct honorific. It takes a conscious effort to use the wrong honorific when Japanese is your native language... and were he to make the effort, why misdirect with the honorific and give any name at all? Kid therefore meant -kun, a young man known to police not as an officer or a suspect._

_"There's only one. And Kid Homage means for us to deduce he knows something about it."_

Amari groans, long and loud and entirely theatrical. Heiji twitches, because the moan overlays his father's voice and that's just _wrong._

 _"That,"_ Heiji's father is saying, _"begs the question of why Kid would want us to connect him to Heiji's case."_

 _"It does indeed, sir, but anything would be baseless speculation at this juncture,"_ the staff psychologist says in their androgynous voice. _"Hakuba-kun, reading through this, I'd like to ask about you. Did you, at any point during the altercation, feel threatened in any way?"_

Blondie actually hesitates. _"... Define 'threatened'."_ The comment's rhetorical, though, because he continues musingly, _"I did not feel that my life was in danger, nor that the Kid Homage intended to injure me. He does, however, do a remarkable impression of a psychologically disturbed individual devolving rapidly, and I was understandably alarmed at the time. Additionally..."_

Heiji can almost see the officers (and his father!) leaning forward at that second pause. Behind him, the twins are attentively still.

_"... additionally, the Kid Homage... either does not have any sense of personal space, or he holds no regard for it."_

Another pause. Then, delicately, the psychologist says, _"We need to know details, Hakuba-kun."_

 _"... When he placed the ring in my front pocket, he... lingered. Not so much that he seemed to be savoring the experience,"_ Hakuba adds hastily, _"but more that he seemed to have almost forgotten where his hand was."_

"I most certainly did not forget," Amari mutters. "I'll have to be clearer next time."

_"I was, quite understandably, discomfited by the liberties taken with my person."_

Agreeing murmurs all around come through the speakers. Then Nakamori clears his throat gruffly and says, _"That settles it. We can keep you on the Task Force, kid, but you're not going to the heists--"_

"WHAT?!" Amari explodes up off the couch. "THE HELL HE ISN'T!"

 _"--no goddamn lunatic is going to molest anybody on my watch. I don't care if you've chased assassins and drug runners and mafia all over Europe, I've got a kid your age and if anybody so much as looked at her the way Kid Homage hassled you--"_ Nakamori devolves into growling and foul language.

Heiji sighs, then meets the twins' bright, gleaming eyes. "Okay. What the fuck do you want to leave the daughter alone?"

 

-0-0-0

 

The twins have no answer for Heiji that night (which Heiji _knows_ is about fucking with his head, not lack of ideas), but by the time Heiji gets up late the next morning, whatever they've been thinking is clearly derailed.

Breakfast is going cold on the table, and the twins have their heads ducked together over an open newspaper. (Campari's fault: for all that he's filled a quarter of the tiny living room with computer gear, he gets a paper delivered every morning. "Newsfeeds filter themselves to my internet use," he's explained. "Papers don't.")

Blue eyes flash over the top edge of the paper, pupils blown and irises bright with glee. "Sleep well?" Amari chirps, as if he's not only completely forgotten his ire from the night before, but it had never happened in the first place.

"Yes," Heiji lies. He hadn't slept any worse than usual, at least. Eyeing his rice, which doesn't look appealing at all, he sighs. "All right, let's hear it."

In answer, Campari simply folds the newspaper so that the page they'd been looking at is in the front, and turns it around.

_Virtually Amazing!  
Exclusive Gala To Show Off Revolutionary Gaming System!_

_Beika, Tokyo - At City Hall, the most prominent citizens of Japan are gathering for a unique event in their lives. They've mingled together before, at high-class events, cultural marvels, and the bustling offices of political and corporate worlds alike; however, they've always been the center of attention, the movers and shakers of Japanese life._

_This party, though, will be different, for the invitations are not their own. Schindler Inc. has invited the pride and joy of Japan's citizenry, their children, to take center stage in the world premiere of Schindler's newest gaming system: the virtual reality capsule, COCOON._

_The games on offer for the event include one written by the acclaimed mystery author, Kudou Yuusaku--_

The paper's fold is obscuring the rest of the article, and Heiji gives the twins an unimpressed look. "I'm not seeing it," he tells them flatly.

"If Mohammed's locked up away from the mountain..." Campari begins in English.

"... the mountain will go to Mohammed," Amari finishes, grinning like the homicidal maniac he is, "And blow up all the locks." When this doesn't make anything click for Heiji, Amari huffs. "And who's the Superintendent General of the Metropolitan Police?"

His dad's ultimate boss? He's-- oh. "Hakuba," Heiji groans. As in Hakuba Saguru, blond-and-snooty himself, Amari's newest interest. Ten to one Amari's toying with the Superintendent General's son. "Can't you give the guy _one_ last night to enjoy...?"

"You couldn't afford the price," Campari assures him, flicking the paper away. "This is going to be fun," he adds, smirking. "I've always enjoyed a good mystery."

"Hey, no, I've got dibs on playing with Hakuba!"

Heiji leaves them playing jan-ken-pon to sort it out.


	5. Chapter 5

  
  
Saguru's first instinct had been to decline the invitation.  His second, born of innate and habitual diligence, had forced him to actually open and read both it and the included flyer (all bright colors and simple kana, clearly directed at a preteen audience).  
  
 _I would have terribly regretted missing this_ , he thinks, looking around the otherwise-dull reception.  Kudou Yuusaku keeps appearing at the center of eddies in the crowd, fans and patrons mobbing him and dispersing according to some elaborate set of mathematical formulas that Saguru has yet to work out in the back of his mind.  Applied physics is not his forté, nor is crowd psychology.  
  
Nor is thinking when his hands are shaking just the tinest bit.  It's _Kudou Yuusaku_ , and Saguru's going to get to experience _Holmes' London_.  
  
... Just as soon as he addresses a small problem occurring near the fountain.  Saguru smooths his tie and approaches a group of children quietly.  
  
"-- nobodies," one of the older boys is saying, sneering in a way that makes his COCOON entrance badge flash in the light.  "Do you know what that means?  It means we're--"  
  
"More than old enough to understand what sort of behavior will embarrass your parents," Saguru interrupts mildly.  Three of the older boys freeze, but the fourth -- the ringleader, a dark boy with spiky hair -- looks apprehensively over his shoulder at Saguru.  He clearly takes in the Caucasian cast to Saguru's features, and the lack of a visible entrance badge, and his eyes go cool and self-important.  
  
Ah.  Saguru recognizes the boy now, though he's never been told the child's name.  That will make this far simpler.  
  
"Someone like _you_ couldn't understand," the boy informs him.  "My father--"  
  
Saguru catches the boy by the back of his collar, just sharply enough that his teeth snap shut on whatever rude thing he was about to say.  Then he looks at the trio of six-year-olds, two girls and a boy without badges, whom the preteens had been bullying.  "My apologies," Saguru tells them sincerely.  "I neither know nor care what started this, but this is no way for anyone to behave.  I hope the rest of your evening will be more pleasant.  Excuse us."  And he carts the ringleader away, his little cohort of cowed bullies following.  
  
"Hey, let me _go_ , you--"  
  
"Let us not cause another scene, hm?" Saguru says mildly, in a voice that has made hardened killers shut their mouths.  The young bully is no match for it, and goes sullenly silent.  
  
Saguru finds his father laughing garrulously over some matter with his top deputy, a couple of milling knots away from Kudou Yuusaku's entourage.  "Ah, Saguru-kun!" his father says upon spotting them, face open and welcoming under shrewd eyes that belie his apparent obliviousness.  "Moroboshi-san, have you met my son?"  
  
The boy in Saguru's grip goes from petulant to confused.  
  
"I've not had the pleasure, sir," Moroboshi replies, looking vaguely ill.  
  
Saguru smiles, polite and warm.  "I've had the pleasure of meeting yours, sir," he says, and the boy tenses in sudden horror.  "And his young friends.  They seem like quite the rambunctious boys.  Opinionated as well.  It's been interesting talking with them, despite our obvious disparities."  
  
Moroboshi swallows.  "I see."  Then, "Well, I think we've monopolized enough of your time, Hakuba-sama, Hakuba-san.  Hideki-kun, why don't you and your friends come with me."  It's not a request.  
  
Saguru's left alone with his father, who claps him on the shoulder in wordless approval.  "We've got a few minutes left before the auditorium opens," he tells Saguru in his ever-amused voice.  "Let's go spend them brushing up my rusty detective skills, hm?"  
  
"Otousan--"  
  
" _Oi, Kudou-san!_ "  
  
Saguru is still warm in the face and walking on the proverbial cloud nine when the party moves to the auditorium.  The COCOON system is lined up on stage, underdressed models moving between the egg-shaped pods, pointing out features in a choreographed routine with overtones of 'airline stewardess' to it.  Why the models need be underdressed when the audience is children, Saguru does not want to know.  
  
He gets in line behind a small girl in pigtails, and takes his badge from his interior jacket pocket.  The badge itself is nice enough, but the pin is thick to prevent breakage, and the point blunted for the younger guests' sakes, and he didn't want to ruin the weave of his jacket.  It's his favorite, after all.  
  
After showing his entrance badge and ignoring the incredulous look flashed across his escort's face -- yes he's aware that he's scarce months shy of being too old to garner an invite -- Saguru is led to a pod in the fourth row, second from the right.  He politely keeps his gaze above the model's shoulders (her face is too thin for the poor girl's bone structure, and it's certainly only the makeup that provides her with any semblence of health), then transfers his attention to her hands as she points out the different systems and explains what they do.  The speech is gentle and overly simplistic, but it's clearly meant to assure the scattered kindergarteners and grade schoolers he can see being helped into their own pods.  
  
He affixes the headpiece to his temples, allows the model to close his door, and awaits the game.  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
He wakes standing on a bare platform, floating in a blank darkness that is neither vast nor claustrophobic.  Two empty stone archways are in his immediate field of vision; Saguru turns, finding three more spaced evenly around the crowd.  Aside from himself, there are two girls near his age -- one with short blonde hair and a stylish dress, the other in dark pigtails and sporting sensible capri leggings under her more rugged dress and jacket -- and then everyone else is between ages five and thirteen.  
  
A sourceless light casts no shadows under anyone, which is more unnerving to Saguru than the emptiness beyond the platform.  
  
The light shifts almost imperceptibly.  "Welcome, Cocoon players," a young voice says calmly.  "The game is starting now.  My name is 'Noah's Ark'.  Pleased to meet you."  
  
"Nice to meet you too!" the children cheer in ragged excitement.  Saguru murmurs politely with them, his voice drowned under theirs.  
  
"Now, I will play the five scenarios' summaries," Noah's Ark tells them.  "Please select your desired game... but there's one important rule to remember."  Saguru is expecting a kindly 'have fun', or something similar, when Noah's Ark goes stern.  "This is not just a video game.  This game decides all fifty of your lives."  
  
 _Wait, what?_  
  
"All our lives?" the blonde high-schooler echoes.  
  
"If all fifty of you reach _Game Over,_ " Noah's Ark explains, the English spoken in almost perfect newscaster American, "You will not be able to return to the real world anymore."  
  
 _Hostages_ , Saguru thinks in dawning horror.  _We're all hostages_.  
  
"So be serious when you play," Noah's Ark says.  "If even one out of you fifty completes the game, you will all win.  Those who got a Game Over before that person wins will still be able to survive and return to the real world.  This is my rule."  
  
 _But how long can the games run?_ Saguru wonders.  The COCOON doesn't have a hydration system, much less nutrient IVs, and if anyone could get into the pods to rescue them, this hostage plan wouldn't work.  
  
Age, body mass, climate: Saguru ticks through the calculations rapidly.  It'll be less than twenty hours before the headaches and nausea start to kick in.  The system may or may not allow them to notice their deteriorating state, but it'll be about three days before children start dying in the pods.  
  
Just in case, he needs a buffer on his estimates.  Saguru must plan to win within forty-eight hours.  
  
Noah's Ark interrupts Saguru's calculating, and the children fall into a sniffling silence.  "You are all here, and can't hear the voices from the real world.  But an adult, outside, just asked one question.  So, let me answer his question now.  
  
"Seeing your arrogant faces, doubtless those of evil politicians: your children will also become evil when they become politicians.  Children of doctors, who only think to earn money, will grow up to become the same.  To prevent this classism, this inheritance of greed and entitlement, this unhealthy environment should be removed."  
  
Another pause, then Noah's Ark says, "Time to start the game.  We begin with scenario 1, 'Viking Lords'...."  
  
Saguru doesn't listen as Noah's Ark lights up each archway in turn, playing video clips in the air above their heads.  He already knows where he must go.  London is his home; Holmes his first love.  He's studied Jack the Ripper, walked what's left of the killer's haunts in Whitechapel, touched the letter From Hell.  
  
Victorian London is _his_.  
  
"Finally, scenario five, 'Old London'.  There you will face many terrible mysteries.  In the year 1888, the serial killer who escaped justice, the murderer who was never caught: Jack the Ripper casts his shadow of terror across the city.  You will need to combine all your skills to capture Jack."  
  
The light of the video show fades, and the children burst into furious murmuring.  
  
Only the youngest children seem to be actually frightened, but even as Saguru steps towards the fifth archway, they're straightening under the older children's determination.  What Saguru can hear sounds more like platitudes and quotes from football coaches -- a great deal of "we can't lose before we've even tried" and "we only need one to win" -- but it's better than needing to soothe forty-seven terrified children.  
  
The two teenage girls sidle up next to him.  "You're the detective, Hakuba Saguru, aren't you?" the blonde whispers covertly.  "Where are you going?"  The other girl, the one with dark pigtails tied low over her shoulders, snorts rudely and points at the fifth arch nearby.  "Oh," the blonde says.  "Mystery London?"  
  
"I came specifically to play that one," Saguru admits.  "Now, though, I believe I have the best chance of surviving it.  You?"  
  
The blonde's eyes go wide.  "I was thinking we'd have the best chance of surviving if we went with you," she says guilelessly, not whispering this time, and Saguru spots a cluster of heads pop up out of the crowd.  Several familiar boys muscle their way towards them.  
  
Saguru sighes, and glances at her stiletto heels.  "If nothing else, London's the only scenario that will be paved."  At which point the bullies from earlier reach them, and Saguru gives them a quelling look.  "Can I help you?"  
  
Hideki draws himself up bravely.  "We're going with you."  
  
"Hm."  
  
"You can't say no," Hideki adds.  "You don't have to like us and we don't have to like you, but if you're the safest to go with that gives us all better odds of having one make it."  
  
So the boy does have a bit more than entitlement to him.  "If I hear one rude word from any of you, I will dunk you in the Thames."  Saguru lets a tiny smirk through.  "That would be the river, by the way.  It was more toxic mud than actual water at the time."  Which is a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much: London had only stopped dumping raw sewage in a decade earlier.  
  
Hideki opens his mouth, then quickly reconsiders and shuts it.  "Fair enough."  
  
They quickly make introductions -- the blonde turns out to be Suzuki Sonoko, of the zaibatsu family, while the brunette is Uzawa Reika, the great-niece of the economist; the boys are Moroboshi Hideki, Kikukawa Seiichiro (a lanky, anemic boy), Emori Akira (stocky and heavy-featured), and Takisawa Shinya (square-jawed even at his age, with his hair in a ponytail) -- and then line up before the archway to London.  
  
Noah's Ark announces, "Every scenario has a cast member who helps you.  If you find him or her, you could rely on that helper."  Then the arches all light up.  "Game Start."  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
While the parents are shouting, and wailing, and one man is twitching on the floor from an ill-considered attempt to break open a COCOON manually, Campari palms his tiny, plastic peashooter gun and swaps out the clip.  
  
Usually it's Amari who uses this, while Campari swipes moments on closed-circuit phones and/or buries himself deep in the target's electronics.  They find it safer than radio and cellular comms: the range on those is too wide, and can be 'hacked' by an idiot with a baby monitor.  Their standards are higher than _that_.  
  
Of course, it would've been pointless for Amari to have it tonight anyway.  Where do you plant a bug when even it's a virtual construct?  
  
The twitching man gets hauled out of the room, fighting security and medical all the way, and no one notices the silenced gunshot in the sound of the heavy double doors slamming shut behind them.  
  
Campari's tiny bug lands on one of the speakers, hidden high in the ceiling.  That's close enough to the wiring to force a connection. "What do you want, Noah's Ark?" he asks, soft and nearly inaudible.  "Just use the one speaker, speak quietly, the bug will pick it up without distracting the rest of these people from your performance."  
  
Static hisses in his ear.  Then, "It is not a performance," the AI states.  "I want to break the threads of fate."  
  
"Bullshit."  Campari knows people, and computers don't construct themselves.  "Noble ideals, vicious execution.  That's not the way the world works.  It's all about vengence and greed, when people start waving the _noble ideals_ flag over another's suffering."  
  
"I am only a computer program."  
  
"You were programmed by a person."  It's belied its own lack of sentience already anyway, in its outburst at a man in the audience -- something about adults toying with a Hiroki's life -- before zapping the other one.  "So it's vengence or greed, hm?"  
  
"No."  
  
"We'll see."  Campari turns the tiny mike off.  He has no interest in speaking to the AI further for now.  Not when he can't yet pick it apart, line by line... digit by digit, if it does any harm to Amari, and he hopes it can feel something like pain.  Anguish will be acceptable if nothing else.  
  
But there's nothing to be done about the AI until he can reach the COCOONs and their computers.  However, there is a man behind the program, who Campari _knows_ can feel pain, and he has a clue already about the target.  The AI really shouldn't have lost its temper.  
  
But who is Hiroki?  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
When Saguru steps through the light into Victorian London, the first thing to hit him is the stench.  It's coal-gas and old fish, kerosene and pipesmoke, factories and thick perfume, and the reek of chamberpots.  Saguru makes a mental note to keep the children away from the gutters where the pots were (are) habitually emptied.  
  
The second thing to hit Saguru is about twenty-five kilos of bony elbows and crinoline.  
  
He lands on his knees on the cobblestones, and a little girl tumbles off him to land on her rump.  She's about six years old, dark-haired and dark-complexioned, with a pursed lower lip and Heidi-style looped braids.  She's also in modern clothing.  
  
"Couldn't decide where to go?" Saguru asks gently.  She shakes her head miserably.  "That's okay.  Up we go," and he helps her to her feet.  As she's brushing off her lacy green dress, and quickly gaining undertones of the same color in her face from the smell, Suzuki crouches modestly before her.  
  
"Here," the blonde says, holding up a little tub of clear unguent.  She swipes a dab of it over the girl's upper lip.  "Lip balm.  Minty scent, you won't be able to smell anything else."  Then she glances up at Saguru and wordlessly offers the balm.  
  
"You're well-prepared," Saguru tells her, accepting gratefully.  
  
She beams, worries momentarily forgotten.  "Sometimes the women at these parties seem to bathe in perfume," she confides.  "I like a nice scent as much as the next girl, but not when everybody else is trying to knock out the crowd with their scents too!"  She tosses the little tub back into her purse and snaps it shut.  "So!  Where to?"  
  
"The obvious route would be to explore Whitechapel--"  
  
"Then let's do that!" Hideki says, the boys all nodding in agreement.  
  
"--however our helper character is clearly Sherlock Holmes, who lives in Marylebone.  The city between is also far safer than the slums of Whitechapel."  Which, granted, isn't saying much.  
  
Suzuki and Uzawa share a look.  "Having Holmes with us will definitely give us a better chance?" Suzuki asks nervously.  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Then that seems like the best bet, doesn't it boys?"  Suzuki tries on a shaky smile.  "We want to survive to beat this game, right?"  
  
"... Yeah, we do," Shinya grumbles.  Then his face firms, jaw going even heavier with the tensing muscle there.  "We'll win and bea--"  
  
Static interrupts him, seeming to come from the sky.  Then, a very familiar voice asks, _"Hakuba-san?  Are you in the London game?"_  
  
It's Kudou Yuusaku.  Somehow he's gotten a line into the game!  With open curiosity on the children's faces, Saguru looks needlessly up into the sky.  "Yes sir," he replies.  "Am I correct that we're near Whitechapel?  I'm afraid I've lost several landmarks."  
  
" _You're in a bit more trouble than that, Hakuba-kun_ ," Kudou tells him.  " _We've just recieved a notice from the Kid Homage_ \--"  
  
"I was taken off that case, sir."  Because the Kid Homage has taken a frightening, prurient interest in Saguru.  
  
" _Be that as it may, you're the only representative of the Task Force here_."  Kudou does have a point.  The author clears his throat, and continues,  " _The notice reads:_  
 _Merry, green, flower and dean:_  
 _The castle's knavemen know five lays._  
 _Count the moths in Atropos' teacup:_  
 _Fifty, twenty, one... snick!_ "  
  
The first two words make no sense, but the second is the street where Jack the Ripper most likely lived.  'Castle' in Japanese is a homophone for 'white' -- as in 'Whitechapel' -- a knave is a jack in cards; a lay could be a ballad or a sex partner.  Jack the Ripper murdered five prostitutes, minimum.  Moths and teacups, Atropos is for thread and lives and fate... the origin myth of silk production, possibly an allusion to some cultures' beliefs that a moth or butterfly is a ghost, fifty children counting down to one and then...  but how could Kid Homage have known about Noah's Ark?  
  
"He's here," Saguru says, feeling sick.  
  
" _That would be my suspicion, yes_."  
  
"He's in the game," Saguru repeats, because it bears repeating.  And there's only two people Kid could possibly be... except no, make that one.  "Where's Suzuki-san?"  
  
Uzawa groans in relief.  "'Bout time ya noticed," she -- _he_ says in a Kansai baritone, pulling off his pigtailed wig and running one strong hand through sweaty, messy short hair.  
  
Saguru nearly chokes.  "What the--"  
  
"Yo."  The boy wipes the back of a hand across his mouth, smearing pinkish lip gloss across the dark skin there, then tosses the wig into the gutter.  He gives Saguru a wide, cocky, happy smirk, and with that Saguru _knows who he is_.  "Hattori Heiji, detective."  And he offers his other, clean hand Western-style.  
  
Oh god.  Oh god Saguru's found a kidnap victim.  Saguru's found _Kid Homage's_ presumed kidnap victim and he _wasn't even looking for him_.  He grasps hold of Hattori's hand, the Osakan's grip tight like a lifeline despite Hattori's untroubled grin.  
  
"I'd say I'm pleased ta meet ya, but yeah." Hattori shrugs.  "Homicidal maniac on one side, nutty computer program on th' other.  Oh, and the Ripper runnin' around.  We got a long game ahead of us, you up to it?"  
  
A gunshot cracks through the night, and the little girl stumbles and falls.  Rings of light start to streak over her body, and she stares at her dissolving hands in shock.  
  
Hattori drops to his knees, dragging Saguru half-down with him.. "Ojouchan?  Oh kid I'm so sorry-- the rest of ya get under cover!" he snaps over his shoulder.  "Now!"  And the boys scatter.  
  
The little girl turns huge eyes up to Hattori and Saguru.  "Promise to get him for me?" she asks.  
  
"I promise," Hattori says roughly.  "We'll save ya, okay?  We _will_."  
  
The rings suddenly vanish, her body shimmering like a rainbow. "Thank you.  My name's--" and she dissolves into nothingness.  
  
There's no time to grieve her.  Hattori drags Saguru under cover where the boys aren't, wary green eyes flicking along the shadowed rooftops.  "Okay, we got pretty much two options and two choices, and Kid's got plans for alla 'em so assume they're all equally screwed."  _Stockholm pessimism,_ Saguru thinks, and then Hattori continues, "Choice one, the boys.  Kid wants ta play with us, not them.  So, one, we stick with 'em and he picks 'em off.  Two, we put 'em someplace safe and he picks 'em off."  Then Hattori pauses, and his grin quirks a little lopsided.  "Or three, we abandon 'em to the streets of Victorian London an' hope they don't learn too much of the underside of life before Kid picks 'em off.  I'm gonna assume ya won't go for that one."  
  
"You'd presume correctly."  
  
"Okay.  Choice two.  Kid knows our plans ta go ta Holmes.  We do that an' he tracks us.  Maybe he lets us have Holmes, maybe he don't, depends on whether an NPC can catch his interest.  Or two, we go ta Whitechapel and try ta get this game done with fast--"  
  
"And he tracks us and does as he will?" Saguru asks dryly.  
  
"Yer catchin' on."  
  
Saguru sighs, runs a hand through his hair, tries to think.  There must be third options, there must, but...  
  
The game is to survive Noah's Ark.  
  
Kid is not suicidal.  
  
If nothing else, Kid will survive.  That gives Saguru leeway to opt for a pyrrhic victory.  
  
And if Saguru leaves the children somewhere, he'll spend too much of himself wondering if he could've done something to save them when Kid tries to gun them down, even if it's only leaping in front of a bullet.  
  
"They come with us."  
  
"Okay."  
  
"And we go to Baker Street."  They need Holmes.  
  
Hattori claps him on the shoulder.  "Lead the way."  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
Campari's footsteps make no sound in the dim hallways backstage, taking him automatically to the camera blind spots and through the darkest shadows.  It's the same instinct that had him choosing matte dresses and antiqued jewelry tonight for him and Heiji, similar outfits and hair because he doesn't have the flair Amari does for creating a familial resemblence without such tricks... the instinct he has to squash when he opens up his phone and the screen lights up half the hallway.  
  
 _Hiroki Schindler Inc._ , brings up a series of Google results on Campari's phone, for one Sawada Hiroki, died two years ago aged ten.  Suicide, investigation of Schindler as his foster parent... computer prodigy.  
  
Hm.  
  
A couple of the twins' tactical scenarios have actually been about assassinating someone to cause a domino effect, sort of an underworld version of World War One.  Shoot one lynchpin and everybody jumps in... but the problem, of course, is picking the right lynchpin.  
  
Hiroki had certainly suicided.  Alone in a penthouse, all the rooms locked, security feeds everywhere and no sign of a struggle... there's reportedly even tape of the boy walking to his death completely uncoerced.  
  
Noah's Ark belies that story, though.  
  
So who can the dominoes be?  A friend from MIT?  A professor?  The articles don't say if Hiroki had any relatives left, and he was being fostered after all, but all that means is that whatever relatives he might've had were unfit in some way or another.  That doesn't mean that they didn't care for or want him, though, for one reason or another.  Additionally, Hiroki was Schindler's golden goose; the man might be angry that so many of his peers have such worthless heirs while his is gone.  
  
Friend, professor, relative, Schindler.  
  
A commotion ahead draws Campari out of his thoughts, and he shuts down his phone.  It's the police, crossing through an intersection with a better-lit hallway ahead.  Uniformed officers under the direction of a tall plainclothesman -- dour and long-faced, with badly-cut curls and a suit trying too hard to look cheap, _why?_ \-- are rolling a gurney with a zipped-up body bag on it.  
  
That had better not be the guy behind Noah's Ark.  Campari's got _dibs_.  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
Seiichiro is a warm, exhausted weight on Saguru's back as they walk through the clammy predawn fog on Wigmore Street in Marylebone, almost to Baker Street at long last.  The walk would've been long enough as it was -- four and a half miles, in the dead of night, through neighborhoods that Saguru would be wary of in the modern era much less 1888 -- but there'd been a great deal of development in the past hundred and twenty-five years, and Saguru's gotten turned around four or five times.  The fifth may or may not count, as Saguru had been mistaken about being on the wrong road in the first place.  
  
"--ou hear?" The voice in the alley they're passing is high-pitched and harsh, like glass shards sharpened from a lifetime breathing cigar smoke and London smog.  "Someone got killed again!"  
  
"No, that's old news."  The voice that answers is deeper, but still female, breathy with mixed horror and excitement.  "He dared to kill two women!  Within an hour!"  
  
The first gasps.  "That makes four deaths now, doesn--" and then they're out of earshot.  
  
Today's Sunday, September 30th, then.  Saguru frowns.  September 30th, September 30th... of 1888.  "Baskerville."  
  
"What's that?" Hattori asks.  He's got Shinya on his back: Akira may be a heavy boy, but he's mostly muscle, and he and Hideki have more comfortable shoes than Shinya does.  (Seiichiro's just as anemic as Saguru suspected at introductions.)  
  
Saguru hefts Seiichiro a little higher on his back, and starts walking faster.  "We must hurry.  If the designers have done their research properly, Holmes is due to depart for a case in the countryside at dawn."  
  
"Aw c'mon, really?  This game's just tryin' ta scr-- mess us over."  But Hattori hitches Shinya up and quickens his pace.  
  
Down Wigmore Street, turn right onto Baker, and they all but jog the last few blocks to 221B.  A hansom cab pulls up just as they reach the front stoop, the door opening to let a square of warm, overly bright light stream directly into their faces.  
  
When Saguru finishes blinking the spots from his eyes, he blinks one more time.  The man standing upon the threshold, waiting patiently for them to speak or remove themselves from his path, is Kudou Yuusaku... except he's wearing a casual Ulster greatcoat, and the iconic deerstalker that is only appropriate for a man travelling to rural districts, never in the city.  
  
They've found Sherlock Holmes.  
  
"Hm," the man says.  Saguru has heard of piercing gazes, but this one is like he's been turned to glass over a large-print book.  "Panicked, exhausted, footsore, and -- most fascinating of all -- I cannot identify a single detail past your approximate ages and genders.  Come in.  My excursion can, at the very least, wait until the next train."  
  
They pass a fat teddy bear of a man in the stairwell ("Holmes?  What on earth--?  Weren't we leaving--?"  "Next train, Watson, or perhaps not at all!  Come, come--"  "... I'll just send the cab on, then, shall I.") and enter Holmes' rooms.  
  
Saguru has been to the museum at 221B Baker Street in London many times, ever since he was a tiny child with a copy of the expurgated, illustrated version of _The Hound of the Baskervilles_.  This was an almost perfect match, save for the clear evidence of daily inhabitance and lack of display cases and the like.  
  
He and Hattori settle their burdens upon the couch, while the other two boys begin poking around the room curiously.  Hattori makes his way to the window, slumping to rest his head upon the cool glass, and Saguru takes the wingback Holmes gestures him to.  
  
Holmes seats himself in the other, facing Saguru, then steeples his fingers together and observes Saguru in silence.  
  
 _Taking my measure, just how urgent do I think my case is and how do I behave under pressure._ Saguru lets his mouth quirk upwards.  "What can you tell about us?"  
  
"As I said," Holmes smirks a little bit, "very little."  
  
"What am I wearing?"  
  
"Slate blue over copper," Holmes answers readily.  "A suit.  However, the cut of it..." And here disgruntlement ghosts over his face, "quite refuses to be categorized.  And your friend is in black, white with eyelet lace, and green, however I cannot see whether it is a dress or a suit.  How very odd, don't you think?"  
  
That's quite telling about the parameters of the game.  But how to explain--?  
  
"What's with the clock?" Hideki asks.  
  
Holmes glances at the boy, then up to the mantelpiece.  Saguru follows his gaze, even as Holmes says, "Nothing at all, young man.  Why do you ask?"  
  
Saguru's got his lever.  "What time is it, Mr. Holmes?"  
  
"12:37-- no, 35."  
  
There's only one reason for the clock to be that badly off and ticking backwards.  They're down to only thirty-five children.  Saguru presses on.  "What time should it be, according to the position of the sun?"  
  
"About seven--"  Holmes blinks.  "I see.  And, of course, the clock is ticking counter to itself.  How very curious.  I'm quite sure no one was in our rooms last night, and Watson has no reason -- nor the mechanical skill -- to tamper with the clock.  And this ties in with your case and my inability to observe you.  But how?" he muses more quietly.  
  
Saguru would really love to see what Holmes comes up with, but they don't have the time.  "Reality is not what you make of it," he informs Holmes.  "However, more importantly... my cohorts and I have been charged with capturing Jack the Ripper."  Holmes' incredulous glance at the children may as well be a sharp bark of laughter.  Saguru finishes, "And fifty people will die if we don't succeed in the next forty-two hours."  
  
What amusement there was vanishes from Holmes' face.  "Now, is that 'The Ripper is planning a mass murder', or 'someone has taken hostages to ensure you make the attempt'?"  
  
"The latter," Saguru admits readily.  "Though it would be a waste of time to track down the hostages or their captor.  The six of us are hostages, in fact, through means that are best understood as electrical implants in our bodies.  They can cause unconsciousness or death -- by your clock, there are fifteen of us already incapacitated, from four other missions elsewhere -- and cannot be removed."  
  
"And if we were to hunt your captor, he has methods of surveillance such as my clock, and would fire them off.  I see."  
  
"That's one parameter.  We also will be incapacitated should we be arrested or injured."  
  
Hideki kicks his ankle.  "Tell him about not-Suzuki-neechan."  
  
Saguru sighs.  "And that would be the complication.  One of our fellow hostages here in London is... quite deranged.  Not suicidal, but he is amusing himself by hampering our efforts.  He's already eliminated our youngest."  Saguru pauses, looks up at Holmes wearily.  "By his count, only he needs to survive to win our captor's game.  He'll leave me and Hattori until last to pose an amusing challenge to him.  But the children--"  
  
At which point Saguru, looking around, realizes there's only the children in the room.  
  
"Your friend left some ten minutes ago," Holmes informs him, and Saguru flushes in embarrassment.  "He noticed something outside the window.  A threat towards us, I opin.  Your deranged fellow hostage?"  
  
God _damn_ the Kid Homage.  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
The plainsclothesman with the fake-cheap suit turns out to be the minion of a fat detective rocking the trenchcoat-and-fedora look.  That guy's in charge, so he'll be the one getting all the official information.  Campari shoots a second bug onto the heel of Fedora's shoe, then vanishes into a toilet cubicle in the women's restroom next door.  
  
Blah blah, sob story about Hiroki not fitting in, the evils of Japan's school system (Campari bites back a scoff; they don't know a goddamn thing about evil schools), his move to America with his late mother, and then...  
  
"I understood why Hiroki wanted to invent an Artificial Intelligence," Kudou says, "after such a bitter and lonely childhood.  But Noah's Ark kept growing after it escaped... after Hiroki, unable to solve the problem of reinvigorating Japan, committed suicide."  
  
Noah's Ark was Hiroki's.  Campari's nails bite into his fist: the kid's dead and out of his reach.  
  
"The program found Hiroki's solution.  This game, the party for the children of Japan's elite: if he can destroy the sheltered, classist, entitlement of society's best, and make the kids walk their own roads without relying on their parents, Japan could change."  
  
"Kudou-san, how do you know all this?" Fedora growls.  
  
"For the past year, I've been investigating a case for our victim, Kashimura Tadaaki."  
  
"A case?  Which case did he request?"  
  
"Hiroki's suicide."  At the officers' shock, Kudou Yuusaku goes on, "Hiroki did suicide, no mistake, but Kashimura-san wanted to know why.  What could make a ten-year-old kill himself?  Kashimura-san needed to know, for his own peace of mind if nothing else."  
  
"Kashimura Tadaaki was Hiroki's... what, then?" another officer asks.  
  
"His real father," Fedora says.  "Isn't that right, Kudou-san?"  
  
"Yes," Kudou agrees.  
  
Check one for a relative in the mix, then, but not as the creator of Noah's Ark.  Campari frowns, thinking.  Kudou had only been working for the man for a year, but Hiroki's been dead two.  The police close a case after they're sure it's suicide, that's why the twins have been assigned to fake them so often, and Hiroki's case was so open-and-shut that it wouldn't have taken longer than a few weeks' fact-checking and sitting around waiting for the tox report.  So why wait another year before hiring Kudou to look into it, unless something had dredged up the question?  Something like... being found and contacted by Hiroki's AI?  
  
Investigating the child's state of mind, targeting the gala... the picture is starting to become quite clear in Campari's mind.  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
There's a narrow alley across from Holmes' flat, not directly across but between the brick-and-whitestone building facing Holmes' door and the shorter brick-and-whitestone building next to it.  
  
Saguru somehow is both mortified and completely unsurprised to find a man in dove-gray pinning Hattori to the filthy brick wall.  He's pretty sure he sees a flash of tongue as he tackles and completely misses the Kid Homage, landing upon the rough cobblestones at Hattori's feet while Kid scrambles up the wall and vanishes in a burst of whooping laughter and smoke.  
  
Slowly, Saguru picks himself up, then turns to face Hattori.  The Osakan boy's hair is mussed, his mouth wet and bruise-red, and his skirt rucked up nearly to his waist.  His leggings are far too tight to conceal the slight swelling at his groin, in the instant before Hattori yanks the skirt back down.  
  
"Shut up."  
  
"I said nothing."  
  
"I know what ya were thinkin'.  It's not... I ain't helpin' him, okay?"  
  
That's probably only accurate due to Kid's preference for a challenge, rather than Hattori's ability to refuse anymore.  "I'm not blaming you for any of that," Saguru informs him, stomach twisting.  "God only knows what he's put you through, but I know it was _not your fault_."  
  
Hattori's expression hardens, shielding whatever reaction he's having.  
  
Saguru's terrible at reassurance.  This is why he handles capturing perpetrators, not soothing victims.  "That said," he continues as gently as he can, "Care to explain what I was seeing?"  
  
Silence.  Then, "... He don't do that.  Outside the game.  There's like, house rules and shit.  I guess..." he goes silent, scrubbing a hand through his hair.  "... I guess this was.  Like.  Permission ta try ta Game Over him or somethin'."  He shoots Saguru a hard, quelling look.  "Which I ain't gonna do, because he's got a chance of bein' the last man standin' and I know it.  Which means--" and suddenly Hattori clamps his mouth shut, looking a tiny bit sick.  
  
Those house rules... Hattori doesn't attack him physically, and Kid Homage doesn't attack him sexually?  But in the game, Hattori can't hold up his side of the rules.  So Kid Homage...  
  
Saguru feels the blood drain from his face.  
  
"Just don't talk about it in front of the kids, okay?" Hattori snaps.  "They don't need ta know about that shit yet."  
  
No.  No, they don't.  But still.  "God, Hattori--"  
  
"Might as well call me Heiji.  We kinda got a lot of shit in common, after all."  Then Heiji straightens.  "And hey, he's miscalculated.  Part of the system's that we can save shit up for later, so now he owes me at least a good kick ta the balls or somethin'."  
  
"But--"  Saguru stifles his automatic protest.  Hatto... _Heiji_ doesn't believe he's going to be rescued, even though it's blatantly apparent that he'll be in safe hands once the game's over.  There's only three participants over age thirteen, after all, so it doesn't matter which one Saguru tackles when he gets out of the pod.  He'll either capture Kid, or prevent him from taking Heiji along.  
  
However, Saguru can't explain any of that.  Heiji needs a professional therapist to handle that realization, not Saguru's blundering, and now is not the time anyway.  
  
They return to find a new guest -- one wearing the black semi-military attire of the police, with his tall helmet under one arm -- in Holmes' rooms.  Nakamori is pacing angrily across the worn rug, chewing on a cigar stub and shooting dire glances at the boys.  Three of them have found a leather football (odd markings over the pieces tell a story of acid and lye where they should not have been; it's either an experiment or clue from some other case); Hideki is paging through a journal that he probably shouldn't have.  
  
Not-Nakamori stops in his tracks, eyeing Saguru and Heiji suspiciously -- Heiji moreso, the Osakan getting a double-take -- like they've brought a more interesting case than his.  (On the one hand, they have.  On the other, it's still about the Ripper, and no officer would bother to come to Holmes about any lesser matter right now.)  
  
"Inspector Lestrade, I presume," Saguru says, more to call the man's attention away from Heiji's feminine attire than from any need to talk to the man.  
  
"You have the advantage of me," Lestrade answers, just as Holmes returns wearing a different coat, this one in a deep brown that Saguru would be unsurprised to find traces of old blood and mud upon.  Of course Holmes would have different working coats for urban and rural environments.  
  
"The taller is Hakuba Saguru, the darker Hattori Heiji," Holmes says breezily.  "You've met their boys," he adds, which is probably where he got their names from; Saguru did neglect proper introductions earlier.  
  
Saguru inclines his head in greeting.  "I take it we're off to Whitechapel, then?"  
  
Lestrade's eyes narrow.  "Rumor's flying high on the streets, is it?"    
  
Saguru merely shrugs, but Seiichiro pipes up, "Two more murders last night, we heard!"  
  
Lestrade groans.  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
The problem, of course, is that there's only one person with any interest in suppressing Kashimura's inquiry into Hiroki's death, and it's the same person who stands to lose everything if Noah's Ark doesn't let the children go.  However, Campari can't _get_ at Thomas Schindler.  The man is (a) staying firmly in the presence of the police, probably because (b) any minute now, one of the parents could realize that he makes an excellent substitute for Noah's Ark.  
  
Oh.  That gives Campari an idea...  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
There's something about taking a nice, easy (albeit jolting) hackney coach along the exact route they'd just trudged over -- especially since Saguru had spent the entire walk on edge waiting for Kid Homage's next move -- but Saguru's at a loss for the word right now.  
  
Whitechapel is no less horrifying in the light of day, what little of it reaches the narrow and refuse-strewn roads.  The horror is not so much about monsters in the dark, though, as it is about the sickening misery to be seen in every corner.  Small, ragged children with eyes like rats, mean and hungry, vanish into the shadows at the sight of Lestrade's distinctive helmet silhouetted in the cab's windows.  
  
Somehow, Saguru doesn't think that the COCOON system was originally designed to be quite this accurate.  Not with such a young and sheltered demographic.  
  
They pull up into a rank, fetid alley, and the cab stops at a tiny cobblestone yard between a Workers' Club and a dismal row of flats.  Dismounting from the cab in Holmes' and Lestrade's wake, Saguru can feel the weight of eyes upon him from the garretts.  Rubbernecking is eternal, it would seem.  
  
He sees the tented white sheet as the boys tumble out behind him.  "Go interview some locals," Saguru tells them, before they can get a good look at anything.  "We'll need their information."  The kids sent, Saguru and Heiji step over to the body, which -- fortunately -- looks far more like it came from a television crime drama than an actual scene.  The blood is entirely the wrong consistency for how many hours she's been dead, for example.  
  
Other than that, though, the realism is remarkable.  Saguru's seen the mortuary photograph of Elizabeth Stride.  It didn't show how ash-pale she was, even accounting for the blood loss, nor how her curly brown hair hung in wiry, grimy locks, nor how she lay with her fingertips limp and bloodstained near her half-slit throat.  
  
Holmes has his magnifying glass out over the lone wound, and a pair of long-handled tweezers that Saguru is 99% certain he stole from Watson's medical kit.  "Ah--!" And Holmes draws something from the wound.  
  
It's a hair.  Coated with blood, but obviously too straight to belong to the victim.  Holmes wipes it with a handkerchief, inspecting it, and ignoring Saguru and Heiji when they bend over his shoulders to see through the magnifying glass.  
  
"Huh.  Blond," Heiji says.  Then he flicks at Saguru's hair, and Saguru startles and nearly falls.  "Short blond, even."  
  
A heavy hand lands on Saguru's neck.  " _Really_ ," Lestrade says sharply.  "And you boys said you were in Whitechapel last night, didn't you?  Is there something you'd like to tell me, Holmes?"  
  
Holmes straightens to his feet.  "Don't be ridiculous, Lestrade, it's unbecoming."  The magnifying glass returns to Holmes' pocket, and he tucks the handkerchief folded around the hair into Lestrade's.  "They were well west of Aldgate by the time the lady was attacked."  
  
Lestrade turns away, grumbling, nearly tripping over the boys as they come running up.  
  
"A lady two doors down saw a man run past her with a shiny black bag!" Hideki begins.  
  
"There's a man with a thick accent," Akira adds, pointing to a short, dark-haired man near the yard's entrance, "who heard a woman shout something like 'Lipski'."  
  
Shinya elbows him.  " _But_ the policeman said that wouldn't be the Ripper's name."  
  
Saguru nods before it can descend into a shoving match.  "Lipski is both a name and an anti-semetic insult for this era," he explains.  "Because of a different killer."  Then he turns to Seiichiro and raises an eyebrow.  
  
"The cart driver who found her said she was still bleeding when he arrived," Seiichiro obediently informs him.  
  
"Very good."  It's only as much as the police ever found out, save for the victim's identity, and this Lestrade's likely to arrest Saguru as the Ripper should Saguru inform the police without even a pretense of searching.  "You're well on your way to becoming proper Baker Street Irregu--"  
  
An arrow spears Seiichiro in the side and thuds, quivering, to pin the boy to the wooden hitching post next to Saguru.  
  
Saguru and Holmes catch his elbows, holding him up, but it's too late.  While Seiichiro shimmers with rainbow light, he pulls the arrow out with thin, shaking hands and unfurls a note from the shaft.  "Huh," he huffs.  "Looks like I'm going to miss some interesting stuff."  
  
It reads:  
 _O Captain, this fine craft_  
 _is no Alice, no Adleaide._  
 _It bears an empire 'neath its deck;_  
 _An orca plys its slipstream._  
 _O Captain, these cannons_  
 _lay leashed to a man,_  
 _unfired, though they toss_  
 _in their moorings from the rip._  
 _O Captain, such flotsam as floats_  
 _in our wake: a spray of holly, three_  
 _silver spoons, an eagle.  And lo,_  
 _the orca has vanished to hunt._  
  
The note falls through Seiichiro's dissolving hand, and the boy is gone.  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
The voices in Campari's ear are muted, buzzing, as Campari slips through the shadows considering his options.  The murder weapon needs to be something a parent would find on the premises, because even though Campari is armed, none of the guests are supposed to be.  The police, of course, are, and Amari would love the chaos if Campari pickpocketed a police holster and used that, but that's a last resort for if Campari can't lure Schindler out.  
  
But if Campari can't use his own weapons, and can't use the police's, what can he use?  It has to be readily visible, no need to search, so things like janitor's mops and wiring are out.  The windows are all on a security system, so breaking them will just set off the alarms.  There were no caterers, so no servingware that he can repurpose...  
  
Huh.  Where did Schindler get his knife?  
  
Campari's gaze falls on the fountain.  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
"It may help to know that our associate considers himself an artist in the manner of Arsène Lupin."  
  
They're once more in a coach, this one driving semi-aimlessly through the streets of central London, and without Lestrade Saguru can speak freely.  
  
"That fits in precisely, yes," Holmes replies.  "It's not a particularly complex code.  Rushed, of course.  No time for more than a veneer of obscurity."  
  
"It looks pretty obscure to me," Hideki says.  
  
Holmes waves that off with a not-particularly-unkind, "You're young yet."  Then he taps the note and holds it down where the boys may see.  "A rough translation would be, 'I have made contact with the crime king Moriarty.  None of his people are the Ripper by his orders.  I am going to kill someone soon: either Holmes, the boys, or one Miss Irene Adler."  
  
The children murmur in awe.  "How'd you get that?" Akira asks.  
  
"It's really quite transparent with a bit of etymology."  At their blank looks, Holmes continues, "'Moriarty' is the English transcription of an Irish name meaning 'sea-worthy'.  These first two lines state that the ship is not a wrecked one as the _Princess Alice_ and the _Royal Adelaide_ were.  Ergo, seaworthy.  The additional details of addressing a captain, and bearing an empire beneath its surface, would indicate an underworld ruler, in this case a crime lord.  
  
"With Saguru's contribution," ("Thank you," Saguru murmurs), "the next line is readily clear.  Orcas bear the epithet 'wolves of the sea', and this fellow hostage of yours styles himself a Lupin, which is Latin for 'wolf'.  The slipstream of a boat is an area of calm water directly between wake and stern; the note's orca is in close proximity to its seaworthy vessel.  
  
"You've heard of loose cannons, correct?  The note states that this vessel has none.  It further adds that Moriarty's men are restless due to the Ripper's activities -- the pun there technically means rough waters -- which is a completely unnecessary and obvious clause most likely written for aesthetic more than informatory purposes.  
  
"Lastly, the final stanza lists a series of wreckage in association with a funerary pun.  Holly, that's myself, Holmes.  The three silver spoons would be wealthy children, namely you, of course.  And the eagle--" Holmes falters imperceptibly.  
  
"He misspelled Adelaide," Saguru points out.  
  
"So he did."  Holmes raps the cab's roof with his walking stick.  "To the opera house, my good man!"  Then he leans back, sets his piercing gaze on Saguru, and says, "Tell me about the Ripper's victims."  
  
Saguru takes a centering breath, calling up his mental index on the Ripper, and does.  
  
Mary Ann Nichols.  Saguru keeps this one short, as her inquest would've ended just a week ago for Holmes, and the subsequent century had turned up no new information.  
  
Annie Chapman.  Her inquest had raised the question of whether the Ripper had anatomical knowledge, i.e. medical experience.  Saguru casts a wry glance out the window eastward, though, and points out, "Thousands of people in London have 'anatomical knowledge' sufficient to reap the organs so easily.  All one needs is a stint of work in a slaughterhouse."  Such as those lining the road in Aldgate, next to Whitechapel.  
  
Elizabeth Stride, they'd just seen.  Saguru only adds her identity to what Holmes has observed.  
  
Catherine Eddowes.  She'd actually been held in the drunk tank at Bishopsgate most of the preceding evening, giving her name as 'Nothing' and then as 'Mary Ann Kelly' before she'd been released again, sobered up, just forty-five minutes before her body was discovered.  Her body had been so brutalized that the question of medical knowledge -- and the lack thereof -- was going to come up again in her inquest.  
  
"Just 'cause they don't do it doesn't mean they can't," Heiji mutters.  "The guy lost his kill and got desperate, made a mess outta rage and need.  Ya ever seen what happens ta an addict when ya take away his fix?"  
  
Holmes manages to not look like he has personal experience with the matter, but inclines his head, and Saguru resumes his debrief.  
  
The last victim, the one who isn't due to be killed until November, would be Mary Jane Kelly.  She's of little importance yet, but Saguru dutifully outlines the scene -- the only Ripper killing indoors, hours spent in Kelly's private room, on her very bed -- and gives the address.  
  
The first two victims, as well as the last, had lived on Dorset Street.  Elizabeth and Catherine, though, lived on Flower and Dean, around the corner and down a block.  
  
"The killer most likely lives there," Saguru finally says.  
  
Holmes raises a brow.  "There are hundreds of people lodging in those three blocks."  
  
"'The foulest and most dangerous two streets in the metropolis'," Saguru quotes.  "Be that as it may, Jack the Ripper is an inhabitant.  Uneducated and unremarkable -- a great many serial killers are men no one would ever give a second glance."  
  
"Are they, then," Holmes muses, before his eyes turn inward.  "Flower and Dean.  And a high likelihood that the killer lives on that very street.  Hm."  
  
"That first note said flower and dean, didn't it?" Hideki asks.  
  
It'd said more than that, now that Saguru thinks about it.  " _Count the moths in Atropos' teacup/Fifty, twenty, one, snick_.  But," how did he not notice right then?  "How did Kid know about Noah's Ark?"  
  
Heiji winces.  "Yeah, about that... he didn't.  Swear he didn't.  He had his own..." He glances at Holmes.  "Okay, this sounds really shitty but we all got captured in the first place because we were gonna play a game, see.  Got us all in one place and next thing we know, whoops this guy calling himself Noah's Ark has us all hostage."  He tears his gaze away to glower out the window.  "He had his own plan ta make that Atropos and countdown line work.  They weren't implants, though.  Here--" and he pinches something out from under the back of Saguru's collar, then holds out his finger.  There's a flattened pellet stuck to the fleshy pad.  "He put one of these on everyone at the reception.  All the players, anyway.  It's a sleep gas, and it's more than I can pay ta tell ya how he planned ta set 'em off."  
  
"He's been Game Overing other players?!" Hideki gasps.  
  
"How could you keep that secret?!"  
  
"It's 'cause he's on _his_ side!" Shinya snaps, glaring accusingly at Heiji.  "It's gotta be--"  
  
" _Sit your asses down right the fuck now_."  The boys' mouths snap shut in pale faces, and Heiji continues, "I.  Am on the side of getting all you kids out alive.  I paid enough makin' sure the pellets weren't poison in the first place."  
  
Saguru suddenly feels sick.  Fortunately, that's when the cab pulls up to the opera house.  
  
"Ya realize we're putting all his targets into one happy barrel for the shooting, right?" Heiji asks _sotto voce_ as they pile out of the cab.  
  
"Would he take the chance?" Saguru asks, equally quiet.  
  
Heiji pauses.  "... Not for all of us.  Too boring.  But we're guaranteed ta lose another one."  
  
"Weren't you saying we're guaranteed to lose whatever we choose to do?"  
  
"Well, yeah."  At Hideki's curious glance back, Heiji and Saguru hurry to catch up, following Holmes into the grand lobby.  Heiji eyes the gilt carvings and chandeliers, then ducks his head back to Saguru.  "Got another question, then."  This time, his voice is pitched to carry to the rest of the group.  "Why's Adler in the game?"  
  
The three remaining boys look blank.  "Why wouldn't she be?" Akira asks.  
  
"Yeah," Hideki says.  "She's in the series, right?"  
  
"As a world traveler," Saguru tells them.  "There's no need for her to appear, save for the fact that she is put into most media adaptations."  
  
Shinya gives him a withering look.  "That's not how video games _work_."  
  
"Exactly," Heiji says, smirking.  "Everybody you can talk to in a video game has got clues to the story."  
  
Saguru blinks.  "... Miss Adler has information on the Ripper?"  
  
"She might not know she does, but yeah."  
  
Holmes leads them backstage, guiding them unerringly through paint-splattered set pieces and mazes of rope and curtains, directly to a dressing room door with 'Irene Adler' written on a piece of paper tacked to it.  
  
Saguru is completely unsurprised when Kudou Yukiko -- in a magenta dress with leg-o-mutton sleeves ten years too early -- answers the door.  
  
"Mr. Holmes," she says brightly, satin skirts rustling.  "Come in, come in, I was just about to send a messenger."  She ushers them inside, all charming smiles at the children and a slightly bemused one at Heiji.  
  
The dressing room has the usual detritus of a performer: makeup, costumes, travel valise and trunk, and several bouquets in simple vases scattered about.  Most of them are roses -- the peaches and pinks of admiration, and one set of love-red -- but there's also a bouquet of irises, and Saguru's eye zeroes in on them immediately.  
  
"He works quickly," Holmes says, also peering past Irene at the bouquet.  
  
"Oh poo.  I was hoping to surprise you."  
  
Heiji's frowning at the irises.  "Good news... sweet... and I got no idea what the little poofy white ones are...?"  
  
Both Irene and Holmes give him identical surprised looks.  Saguru, not unkindly, explains, "It's Victorian flower language, not hanakotoba.  Irises are 'I have a message', and I believe the white bells aren't lily-of-the-valley...?"  
  
"Very good," Irene tells him.  "They're bladdernut, meaning frivolity, and the cluster flowers are candytuft and mean indifference.  Which is quite odd in my line of work," she adds.  
  
"So what's the greenery for?" Hideki asks.  
  
"Cypress," Saguru answers.  This is one of the other few flowers he has memorized.  "For death.  Kid Homage has sent Miss Adler a death threat."  
  
"'Nothing personal,'" Irene interprets, resting her head on her hand like a girl half her age.  Her eyes twinkle with some secret mirth.  "'But I'm going to kill you for my entertainment.'  It's insulting, is what it is, but I suppose some people have no taste for music."  She makes a face.  "Philistines."  
  
Heiji politely ignores that. "So he's gonna kill ya for kicks?  What'm I sayin', that's why he got in this mess in the first place -- nothin' personal like ya said, just he came ta London ta kill off interestin' people and mess with the Ripper case."  He scrubs a hand through his hair.  "An' he's bein' real patient about it, too, though I dunno what his original plan was."  
  
"Heiji is our resident expert on the man who sent you the threat," Saguru tells Irene.  
  
"Much ta my dismay," Heiji agrees.  "Did he give ya any hint about the time?  'See ya tonight' written on a card or somethin?"  Irene shakes her head, and Heiji sighs.  "Okay.  He's got a taste for the dramatic, so... yer next performance.  Probably during a solo.  Ya got a solo I assume?"  
  
"Of course."  
  
"Ya really oughta cancel--" Irene rolls her eyes.  Heiji continues, "--but he'd just come hunting anyway.  We'll set a trap during yer solo."  
  
"That's settled, then."  Irene claps her hands decisively.  "Which leaves us with a few hours to spend.  Tell me about the rest of this case."  
  
Irene has this way of focusing like you're the only person in the room.  It somehow works on six people at once, and it's winning the kids over like puppies.  They're talking over each other in their excitement explaining their Ripper findings.  "Lipski?" she asks, when they reach that clue.  "Is he sure it wasn't Lizzie?"  
  
"As in the victim's name," Holmes says sharply.  
  
It's a weak connection at best, and in the real world would be an unlikely lead.  But this isn't the real world, so by video game rules, it's the right lead.  Which means the killer knew his victim.  Except...  
  
"The victim went by Liz," Saguru murmurs slowly.  "Long Liz, to be precise.  So--"  He sucks in a shocked breath.  "-- We're looking for a different Elizabeth."  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
Campari doesn't have the chance to plot a path past the security cameras before Kudou Yuusaku sweeps into the grand reception room with an entourage of police, Schindler, and a round old man of little note.  They go straight to the fountain, where a latex-gloved officer wades in and fetches the knife from the statue's hand.  
  
Dammit.  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
They have to swear up and down that they'll be back for Irene's performance-slash-murder-attempt, but there's no question that they must return to Whitechapel post-haste.  The game ends when they catch the Ripper -- Ms. Elizabeth of Long Liz's acquaintance, on Flower and Dean Street, most likely at or very near #32.  The chances of her living elsewhere are low: the area is mostly transients, but that just means that there's little point in remembering anyone you don't see day in and day out.  
  
Elizabeth's one of the most common names of the Victorian era, though, and short hair is nearly as much so among the most desperately impoverished women in Whitechapel.  Hardly any would choose their hair over the money they could get for it, not when they and their children are starving and homeless.  
  
(Saguru checks his watch as they re-enter Whitechapel.  12:06.  They're the last players left: three children, Heiji and Saguru, and Kid Homage wherever he may be.)  
  
Twenty-three buildings on Flower and Dean, two and three stories tall, eight to twelve rooms to let each, one to seven people per room -- the most crowded rooms have children piled like puppies in nests of blankets and lice, with a worn-out woman nursing another on the narrow cot pretending to be a bed.  There's easily a thousand people crammed into the block, over half of them children and another quarter in grandparents wheezing through smog-rotted lungs.  
  
They find a dozen Elizabeths in five tenements.  The four that aren't enfeebled or toddlers have alibis: a nine-year-old with three missing fingers had been snatching dropped bolts at her factory job, lucky to get a night shift so she could go to ragged school on weekdays; Old Betty and her daughter Miz Beth had been servicing a client with an incest kink -- "And may he rot where the good Lord puts him," Old Betty said, spitting a thick brown wad of tobacco at Saguru's feet -- and Ellie had been scrubbing a week's filth out of the lodging-house kitchen, as she did every Saturday night.  
  
At the sixth house, Holmes asks the matron for Lizzie.  
  
"What you want with a stuck-up thief like that?" the skeletal matron asks.  
  
"Stuck-up thief?" Holmes echoes.  
  
The matron sniffs.  "She ain't selling and just paid up for the month."  Saguru's attention sharpens at that: Elizabeth Stride had been found without a cent left on her.  "What would you call it?"  
  
"Interesting."  Holmes peers into the murky hall behind the woman.  "May we speak with her?"  
  
"Told you, she ain't selling," the matron says, but steps out of the way.  "Come back and see me when she kicks you out, I can still wet yer willie."  
  
Saguru holds his shoulders stiffly, herding the boys up the stairs and feeling his ears burn as the matron calls up after them, "And don't you be taking refusal to sell as permission to get it free!  I won't have that under my roof!"  
  
"What's she not selling?" Akira asks.  
  
"The only thing the most victimized people got left," Heiji replies tonelessly.  Then they reach a grimy wooden door, and Holmes knocks.  
  
"Miss Lizzie?"  The silence from inside is more tense than vacant.  Holmes knocks again as the house creaks.  "Miss Lizzie, we need to speak to you."  
  
Something inside clatters, then the door bangs open, and a short figure comes barrelling through.  Her fringed shawl slips through Saguru's fingers, leaving only straggly lint behind, and Akira goes rainbow-shimmering.  
  
She's armed and running.  There's no time to watch Akira vanish; Holmes bolts in pursuit, Saguru hard on his heels, with Heiji and Shinya and Hideki running in their wake.  
  
Her dingy mob cap disappears quickly into the crowded streets, but Holmes is perhaps the best-dressed man here and his top hat bobs six inches above the masses.  It turns south at the end of the street, zigging and zagging between carts as Lizzie the Ripper clearly tries to shake him off, then zips into Aldgate East.  Saguru follows, dodging weary day laborers off to their homes or -- more likely -- bars, shoes sticking in the coagulating runnels of blood from the butchershops lining the road.  He leaps a bit of offal, hears a squish and a yelp behind him, then Heiji is shoving a stumbling Shinya's hand into Saguru's grip.  
  
South again, left onto what will become the A100 of Saguru's time, and it's a straight shot from here to the Tower of London, and the bridge beyond that.  
  
Tower Bridge won't be completed for another six years.  Where is she going...?  
  
The crowds thin under the long shadows of the Tower of London, the sun sinking behind the fortress and nowhere to go but the construction site at the riverside.  Now Saguru can see Lizzie properly: a tiny woman in a shapeless dress that had once been brown, bare feet flashing with half-dried blood.  Her shawl might've been violet before it had been washed to gray; it's bluer than her smog-stained mob cap.  
  
She darts onto the steel girders of the half-built bridge, racing to oblivion in the blood-red sunlight.  Her shawl falls free, whipped from around her shoulders and into her arms, and Saguru spots what she already has: a barge floating placidly downriver, far enough to port that it'll wend its way directly under the construction scaffolding.  
  
Shinya can't run any faster.  Saguru sees Lizzie loop her shawl over a protruding girder and fall.  The slip of gray-violet flickers out from under Holmes' reaching grasp, but it doesn't matter: the man has one arm hooked under a coil of thick rope, flinging it after her.  Saguru catches up just as Holmes vanishes under the bridge.  
  
The rope is thick and greasy in Saguru's hands.  He clamps his shoes on the swaying length and lets himself slide, only half-controlled, until he lands with a thump on the wheelhouse roof.  Heiji lands just feet away, then Hideki -- almost falling over the stern -- and--  
  
A splash heralds rainbow shimmering in the Thames.  Dammit.  
  
Saguru rolls off the wheelhouse roof, into a puddle of fresh blood.  A bearded crewman in an oilskin coat is bleeding out from a slashed throat, eyes glazing over already.  How many crew on a barge this size?  Captain, river pilot, one or two on engines and coal, and no labor laws to require a second shift to let them rest.  Four, then.  
  
The rest of the ship is a nightmare already.  A sailor lies where he fell on the railing, guts unspooling over the side.  Another is splayed against a cluster of barrels, blood sprayed in wide arcs from a deep gash in his femoral artery, hands lying limp where he tried to hold the wound shut.  
  
Saguru catches up to Holmes at the bow, just as Lizzie yanks her knife out of the riverboy navigator's back and shoves him into the water below, too late to rescue: even if the boy survives the fall, and could survive the infections of Thames water in an open wound, he's already being run over by the barge.  
  
A gunshot rings out, and Lizzie spins even as Holmes falls.  Heiji reaches Saguru's side, breathing a soft ' _fuck_ ', and Saguru takes the chance to shove Hideki down and glance over his shoulder, because the gunshot came from behind and above.  There's a caped figure on the bridge, Kid Homage silhouetted in the last dregs of twilight, visible for only a moment before he disappears.  
  
Saguru can't think about that now.  He turns back to Lizzie.  
  
The Ripper is covered in blood.  Great splashes from hem to throat, thin hands coated like red gloves, it forms a ragged half-mask over crazed eyes and drips from the tips of bobbed locks the color of Saguru's.    
  
She can't be more than fourteen years old.  
  
"Shi-neechan," Heiji whispers.  
  
It's a mistake.  Her bloodshot eyes fall on him.  Then she shrieks in raw hate and rushes him.  
  
Saguru tries to push Heiji out of the way, but Hideki's underfoot and Heiji all but throws them free before Lizzie lands on him blade-first.  She's screaming incoherently, stabbing and stabbing at Heiji's rainbow-shimmering body--  
  
And then Kid Homage is hauling her off Heiji by a garrotte in her throat.  She scrabbles at the razor wire, screaming silently with her knife still in hand, and manages to slice over Kid's hands.  
  
He stares as his body starts to glow.  "You have got to be kidding me," he mutters.  
  
"Hey," Heiji smirks.  "Least it didn't hurt."  
  
They both vanish.  
  
Lizzie's body falls at Saguru's feet.  Thirteen years old, a bundle of rags and fleas and lost potential.  
  
"She never had a chance," Hideki murmurs.  
  
"No," Saguru agrees.  "No, she didn't."  
  
Silence.  
  
"... Hakuba-san?  Why hasn't the game ended yet?"  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
It's too risky.  
  
Campari, with the ease of long habit, tamps down on the razor-edged, Amari-shaped emptiness at his side, covers that awareness with snowy rationality, and then pulls a mask of 'Uzawa Rumiko frightened sick for her little sister' over all of that.  
  
He's been wasting time.  Running around like an untrained kindergartener, not a thought in his head but killing the target... stupid.  Timing is as important as target.  He can't kill Schindler here.  Being detained by police is a mark of failure, and he would've been severely punished if a named agent got wind of it.  
  
No, timing is everything, and a convenient jailcell suicide is far better than anything Campari can do here.  He can make it look like Schindler screwed up, knotted the rope wrong and didn't jump from high enough, and it'll be a wonderfully slow and painful death.  
  
Campari slips back into the auditorium.  No one seems to have noticed him missing; the audience is all weeping and broken, eyes pinned to the last two COCOON capsules onstage.  
  
Suzuki Sonoko's isn't one of them.  
  
Campari falls heavily into his seat, shaking.  Amari's _lost_.  How could Amari lose?  How could... how...  
  
That's it.  Fuck training.  Fuck his survival and secrecy and everything he's ever learned.  When the last two pods vanish, Campari is going to start shooting.  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
The end of the game is almost anticlimatic.  Saguru breaks open a couple of the barrels one of the crew corpses is broken against, spilling salt and leathery fish everywhere, then he and Hideki take them and shimmy down the side of the barge listing broadside into the river traffic.  The first fiery crash goes up while they're poling to shore, and the second happens just as Saguru is pulling Hideki onto the slick cobblestones.  
  
As smoke rises over a completely inaccurate but dramatic full moon, the city fades from existence, leaving only the shadowless platform and five stone arches they'd begun with.  
  
Two players left.  They've won.  All the children are safe.  
  
Saguru starts to chuckle from sheer relief.  After a moment, Hideki joins in.  
  
"That was fun," he says between giggles, turning bright eyes onto Saguru.  
  
"Yes.  Yes it was... Noah."  Hideki freezes, and Saguru adds, " _Is_ it Noah?  I'm afraid 'Noah's Ark' is a bit of a mouthful."  
  
"How..." Hideki swallows, then flickers like a poorly-tuned television.  The boy who appears in his place is younger, perhaps ten years old, with a sober face and wise eyes.  "It's Hiroki.  Sawada Hiroki.  How did you know?"  
  
"Moroboshi-kun and I had an altercation at the reception earlier.  He would never have joined my group after that sort of embarrassment."  Saguru shrugs.  "There were other clues, but that was the most obvious."  
  
"But you didn't... you just let me pretend the whole time?  Didn't tell anyone?"  
  
Saguru shrugs.  "That would've defeated the purpose," he says.  "All your purposes: breaking the children free of their reliance on their parents, playing with other kids..." he raises an eyebrow, "... making sure that at least one player -- you -- would finish the game, so no one actually would die."  
  
Hiroki winces.  "That Kid Homage guy almost ruined that part," he says.  
  
"Is that why you replaced the Ripper character with someone he'd know?" Saguru asks, though he's not expecting a denial.  "Heiji doesn't seem the type to nickname someone 'Death' of his own accord."  
  
"... Yeah."  Hiroki looks away, rubbing the back of his head.  "I couldn't find much with the time I had, but there was a picture of them from a few years ago.  So I used that."  He tries to smile, fails.  "I guess that was kind of mean of me."  
  
"Hey."  Saguru sets a hand on Hiroki's shoulder.  "It's okay.  You might be an AI, but you're still just a kid.  It's _okay_ if you got upset."  
  
Hiroki stares at him, eyes huge, and Saguru can't help it.  He pulls Hiroki into a hug.  "It's okay.  It's okay..."  
  
They stay that way for a while.  Hiroki doesn't cry -- Saguru's not sure he'd be able to handle that -- but he's basking in the care obviously enough that even Saguru can tell.  Poor kid.  
  
"It's time to go," Hiroki eventually murmurs into his shoulder.  
  
"Will you reappear?  Outside the game?"  
  
Hiroki shakes his head.  "I was used badly enough when I was alive.  As an AI... no.  There are too many people who'd use me -- use my kind -- for bad purposes."  
  
There's nothing Saguru can do.  Hiroki's right.  No one would see a child; they'd only see a program, a... an interactive diary, at best.  Some 21st-century take on Anne Frank, something to touch your heart and then put away on a shelf.  Nothing real, not the little boy with thin hands on Saguru's fading arms.  
  
He's fading.  
  
"Goodbye, Hakuba-niichan," Hiroki says.  
  
Saguru wakes to the scent of fear-sweat and blinking lights.  The capsules are already opening, excited children tumbling out and parents streaming past the velvet rope towards the stage, and--  
  
 _Heiji_.  
  
\--the latch on Saguru's pod clunks open.  He shoves the door up, yanking at his headset, and yells, " _Suzuki Sonoko's an imposter!  Grab her!_ "  
  
That only gets bewildered parents looking at him, blocking the police trying to get onstage, and Saguru's feet hit the stage just as smoke billows from a capsule two rows and five seats down.  
  
 _Now_ the parents run, yanking their children out of the way.  Saguru leaps down the two platforms and runs straight into the smoke.  Kid Homage's distinct silhouette appears in the streaming fog, bright laughter and billowing cape, then he raises his hand and--  
  
Saguru gets his arm up just in time to block the light from the flash bomb.  He spins anyway, because Kid Homage won't be in the capsule anymore -- the nearest exit is straight through the auditorium's side door --  
  
Green and black and streaming pigtails flicker in the closing side door.  _Heiji_.  
  
Saguru bolts in hot pursuit.  He has to catch Heiji.  He can't let Heiji return to being Kid's captive, he _can't_.  Heiji needs help.  He needs to know he doesn't have to return, that he's safe, that he can be protected and deserves to be.  
  
The reception hall is to the left.  Heiji turns right, going deeper into the building.  Why's he doing that?  Does he know it'll be easier to rescue him the longer he's out of Kid's reach?  ... Haven't they run past this door already?  
  
Saguru starts to develop a stitch in his side.  Heiji's in remarkable shape for a teenager who's been held captive (trapped indoors?) the last few months, who wasn't a runner before that, who... has run headlong into a dead end.  Saguru stops at the end of the short corridor, panting, to give Heiji the sort of space he'd give any cornered animal.  He watches Heiji turn, skirt swirling in the dim light and wig half-hiding his eyes.  There's something off about the dress...  
  
Heiji grins, bright and mad, then pops a pair of shades over his eyes and sets off another flash bomb at his feet.  
  
Saguru leaps right into it, arms spread wide, and hits the wall hard without catching so much as a thread.  
  
Heiji's gone.  
  



	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's note: I am basing Heiji's height estimate upon his canon appearance relative to Ran and her canon height, because there is absolutely no way that he's 180 cm/5'11" if A. she is 160 cm/ 5'3", and B. he is not notably tall compared to most of the adults in the series. Not that it's impossible for a Japanese person to be that tall, (I saw several on my recent trip), but I'm 168 cm/5'6" and I felt 183 cm/6' tall when I was over there because of how I compared to the crowds.

  
Amari lands in a crouch at the bottom of a storm drain, rubber-soled dress shoes silent and muffled against the dank concrete, then straightens primly and slings Heiji out from under his arm.  One gloved hand steadies Heiji as he gets his feet under him.  
  
When Heiji's as settled as he's going to get, he plants his feet and socks Amari in the gut.  "You didn't negotiate for that makeout, bastard," he snaps.  
  
"Worth it," Amari wheezes, sucking in heavy gulps of air that alchemize into giggles in his lungs.  Heiji kicks at his ankles and misses, Amari dancing away easily, his laughter coming more easily and wildly with every second.  
  
Movement in the connecting tunnel, and Campari eels out of the dark space, still wearing his gala disguise.  The dress is muddy, but not a loss; the shoes, however, are wrecked.  He stalks across the sodden muck and sweeps Amari into his arms, clutching like he's far younger and saner than he really is.  "What happened in there?" he asks, voice raspy and overcontrolled.  
  
Heiji can't see Amari's face, but after a moment Amari shakes his head helplessly against Campari's shoulder.  "Bug the debrief?"  
  
"Relays in place," Campari replies.  "But no, seriously, you _failed_ \--" Amari's most brittle and least sane grin shatters up onto his face, "-- and Hakuba seemed to think _I_ was Heiji, what _happened_?"  
  
"I have no idea.  The programming should've been based on body-scans and nothing else, but..." Amari shrugs.  "He showed up big."  
  
"... That explains thinking I was Heiji."  They still match, save for a bit of white eyelet lace on Heiji's dress and varying amounts of runoff gunk on their shoes.  "And the failure?"  
  
The tips of Amari's ears go pink as he looks nonchalantly upwards and away.  "... Damn game didn't know the difference between 'up the road' and 'across the street'," he grumbles.  "A couple nicks near the wrists, and off I went."  
  
"A couple of nicks?" Campari echoes incredulously.  His eyes drop to Heiji, and Heiji can't not answer.  
  
"One two, like that," he says, tracing his fingertips lightly over each bare forearm.  He didn't see how deep the cuts might've been on Amari, but tracing them out now... Yeah, no way was it more than a flesh wound.  Neither cut even got the thin skin over the veins, though the one on the left might've got part of the tendon.  It's kind of hard to tell without adult musculature to compare to.  "He was hauling the Ripper off me."  Heiji's stomach turns even as he says it, because Campari is going to hurt him for that, why the hell did he say that?  
  
Campari turns his gaze back onto Amari.  "You didn't just snap his neck?!"  
  
"... It was Sherry."  
  
"What," Campari croaks.  He doesn't give Amari a chance to answer.  "Noah's Ark found out that much?  About us?  And Hakuba _saw_ her?"  
  
Amari freezes.  Then, "... Fuck."  
  
Heiji ducks, crouching out of the way as they explode into motion.  They go to opposite corners, digging into the shadowed niches up just under the street.  Plaster showers down, a couple of large spiders plopping down with it and skittering away, and they both come up with large bundles in trash bags at the same moment.  
  
Amari rips into his with sharp nails, and fabric falls into his hands.  He drapes clothing over his shoulders, letting the trash bags fall where they will, then begins tearing his mask off.  
  
Campari's bundle is more fragile.  A folding footstool provides dry space for a netbook and wiring that Campari plugs into a small relay stuck on the tunnel entrance.  With a flash drive in the remaining port, and an ominously active silence eminating from the netbook's tiny speakers, Campari fishes a cell phone from the depths of the bag and lets the flimsy plastic fall.  
  
He ignores Amari pulling off his long wig as he thumbs in a number.  "Moshi moshi, Sherry."  He transfers the phone smoothly to his other hand as Amari pulls off Campari's jacket.  "Any idea how you could've been compromised online?" he purrs.  
  
"You would've been fourteen or so!" Amari projects at the phone, switchblade knife snicking open.  He slices right up the back of Campari's dress, then through the sleeves, and lets it fall.  "Picture of you somewhere, linked to us."  
  
"Has Akemi been sharing baby pictures with the boyfriend, Shiho?  Perhaps letting him digitize copies for FBI files?"  His eyes are bright, intent.  "Known associates, common aliases, current survival status?"  
  
Heiji wraps his arms around his knees and eyes Campari warily.  That pleasant, calm voice... Where's Campari's gun?  There's nowhere in the waist cincher or hose that can hide the damn thing, but he knows it's there.  Somewhere.  He can almost feel Campari's fingers itching to pull the trigger.  
  
"Well," Campari replies, almost cheerfully.  "Let's find out how much we've all been compromised, hm?"  And he taps the netbook's keyboard.  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
"Hakuba-kun, if you're all right to begin...?" Megure-keibu asks, without so much as a nervous glance at Saguru's father in the back of the room.  
  
Saguru is not at all 'all right', but he won't be for... God, who knows when they'll manage to rescue Heiji now?  He takes a deep, calming breath, tries not to glance at Kudou Yuusaku because he needs to not embarrass himself in front of his favorite living author.  Which he may yet do even without his fannish awkwardness shredding what's left of his composure.  
  
"Upon entering the medium of the game, I found myself standing upon a platform in a void, with approximately forty-seven children ranging from ages five to thirteen -- I did not make a headcount-- and two girls roughly my own age--"  
  
Several of the room's occupants startle.  
  
"Hakuba-kun, there were only two teenage participants present," Kudou informs him.  "Yourself, and Suzuki Sonoko."  
  
"Nevertheless."  Saguru makes a mental note to check that, even as a young officer jots it down in his notebook.  "Suzuki Sonoko, who I shortly determined to be Kid Homage -- her disappearance the instant Kudou-san read the notice was rather unmistakeable -- and a girl she introduced as Uzuwa Reika.  Who turned out to be Hattori Heiji."  Saguru pressed a hand to the bridge of his nose, more to conceal the tightening and heat prickling in his eyes than anything else.  "But I'm telling this out of order.  
  
"Uzuwa Reika.  Approximately 166 centimeters," though Heiji had looked a little shorter somehow, perhaps the vagaries of fashion and virtual lighting had made a hash of Saguru's estimates?  "Muscular build, broad shoulders.  Dark complexion, long black hair in low pigtails, no bangs, green ribbons.  Brown eyes.  Dark green dress, a centimeter above the knee, matte fabric, white eyelet lace at the hem and scoop collar.  Black cropped jacket, velveteen.  White capri leggings.  Flat ankle boots, black leather."  
  
There'd been something off about that when he was chasing Heiji through the building, after escaping the game, though.  What was it?  
  
Megure glances at the young officer taking notes.  "Check the security cameras for someone like that."  
  
"Noah's Ark made his announcement--" Saguru closes his eyes, the better to block out now and recall then.  It's not quite verbatim, but better than most witness statements.  
  
The calculations.  Hideki who was Hiroki.  Entering London.  Kudou's transmission.  Kid's disappearance, the Game Over as his calling card, Hattori Heiji.  The options.  Heiji's defeatism.  
  
Holmes.  Heiji's disappearance, Kid's... assault.  Call a spade a spade, games and deals and Heiji's denial aside, it was assault.  
  
Saguru is very carefully not thinking of the thief's hands in his pockets, slipping gems wherever they fit, stealing Saguru's e-reader and playing the devolving madman far too well.  
  
Irene Adler.  Kid's gas pellets, Heiji's unknown price paid to keep them from being poison.  Lizzie.  
  
"That wasn't my original storyline," Kudou murmurs thoughtfully.  
  
"Noah's Ark admitted as much, sir.  Though it was fairly apparent when Heiji called her Shi-neechan.  She's someone the Kid Homage is in contact with, at least as recently as August.  The image Hiroki found is some four or five years old, so she'd be about nineteen now, but quite recognizeable."  
  
"Did he say where he found it?"  
  
"Unfortunately, no.  And we cannot inquire any further; the program deleted itself."  
  
A quick run through the ending, through meeting Hiroki, and Saguru blinks.  "... He said 'them'.  That he found a picture of both this Shi-neechan and Kid Homage together, somewhere online."  After Kid Homage Game Overed that little girl, within minutes of beginning the game, but before they reached Irene Adler with her vital clue to Lizzie.  ... Perhaps even before they reached Whitechapel and the witness who heard a shout of 'Lipski'.  "How long were we in the game?" Saguru asks, thinking furiously.  
  
"Three hours."  
  
Huh.  "It seemed longer.  However, three hours..."  Even a prodigious program like Hiroki couldn't possibly get into secured databases that quickly, not with his attention split to monitor and participate in the game.  Not without previous backdoors into them, and why would Hiroki have bothered?  He didn't seem to be interested in destroying Thomas Schindler, else he would've simply ruined the man financially or legally.  
  
No, Hiroki would've searched databases closer to home first.  Something unsecured.  Something familiar.  Something... with a picture he already knew was there for the taking?  "He recognized Kid Homage."  
  
"Pardon?" Kudou asks.  
  
Saguru meets the author's eyes.  "Hiroki didn't have the time to find and integrate the new Ripper from scratch.  Nor would he have had the impulse to go searching unless he already knew there was something he could use."  He folds his hands together to stop their shaking.  "He would've known what Kid looked like under the disguise.  There must be a picture out there, one of Kid and Shi-neechan, on an unsecured server and site.  Someplace Hiroki knew, someplace Hiroki would've seen a teenager often enough to remember."  Hiroki had never gone to high school, not in Japan or America.  He'd been a recluse, not so much as a Facebook profile, nothing but his work and...  "MIT."  
  
Kudou's eyes gleamed.  "You think that Hiroki wasn't the only prodigy at MIT four years ago."  
  
"The youngest, yes.  The only..." Saguru smirked.  "I need a computer."  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
Campari's hands are flying over the keyboard, _takatakataka_ , and his face is icy.  "The yearbook," he hisses.  Unnoticed, Amari plucks the cell phone from his shoulder.  
  
"Well, Shi-neechan.  Aren't you in trouble."  Amari makes a mocking little fake-sad sound through pursed lips.  "I hope you have a nice, reclusive identity ready to step into.  Or perhaps Obachan will give you a place to stay... Oh, but that's right, Vermouth hates you.  Looks like your only hope is to go beg Rye to hide you and hope we make it quick and painless when we find you."  
  
"Gotcha."  Campari turns the little computer to show what he's found: a graduation picture, Shi-neechan in gray with red stripes, a funny hat vaguely resembling a beret on her head and a diploma rolled in her hands.  She's beaming, soft and genuinely happy, with the twins hanging off her shoulders.  They're thirteen and barely reach past her jaw, and are only distinguishable from each other by their hairstyles.  Amari is throwing a peace sign at the camera, in what has to be the most ironic pose ever; Campari is smirking, chin up in an attempt to look taller.  
  
Amari tugs the computer away, types something quick, raises one eyebrow at Campari.  Campari frowns, and Amari types again.  
  
"All right, all right.  Just let me get this first..."  And Campari takes the computer back.  
  
Amari grins.  "Lucky Shi-neechan.  This is what you're going to do..."  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
The artist is just putting the finishing touches on the sketch of Shi-neechan the Ripper, little rubs of eraser and thumb making no difference that Saguru can tell, when Takagi-keiji knocks at the office door.  The man's eyes are slightly wild over dark-ringed exhaustion, the whites almost entirely visible.  "Saguru-kun?" he says, gaze flickering towards the sketchpad.  "You're.  Er.  Requested.  If you're done here?"  
  
The artist nods, and Saguru stands.  "I am.  Has the computer squad located the relevant image?" he asks as he steps out into the hallway.  
  
"Um.  No.  You're never going to believe it, though."  The man sounds almost like he's stifling disbelief himself, a hint of incredulous -- laughter, perhaps? -- that Saguru cannot for the life of him take alarm at.  
  
"Believe what?"  He cannot take alarm at the tone, but neither can he imagine what could've occurred that wouldn't warrant it.  Heiji's return would be cause for elation, not this stifled shock; Kid Homage... what could Kid Homage do that wouldn't be ominous?  
  
In answer, Takagi-keiji simply raps on the door of an interrogation room, then pushes it open.  "Megure-keibu, Nakamori-keibu," he says, inclining his head to bow Saguru inside.  "Ojousan."  
  
The third occupant of the room sets her styrofoam cup of tea down precisely upon the table, and turns to face them.  
  
It's Shi-neechan.  
  
A composed young woman of twenty, cold-eyed and unsmiling, she examines Saguru with all the emotion of a lizard... but no, there's a glint of something beneath that, a shiver of light off manicured nails as she laces her fingers together in her lap.  She looks ever-so-slightly ill, in fact, moreso than the station's sickly fluorescent lights can account for.  
  
"This _is_ a surprise," Saguru says, for lack of anything less trite.  
  
"You'll get used to it," the woman replies without a shred of sympathy, then briskly continues, "Dr. Miyano Shiho.  I'm told you'd recognize me."  
  
Saguru blinks.  How could she _know_?  "I only just now finished with the sketch artist."  
  
She shrugs.  "I can tell you Kid bugged the debrief."  Before any of them can do more than choke in protest, she adds, "Let's get down to business, though.  You're looking for the one known photograph of myself and Kid Homage."  She lifts a hand, examines her manicure in false nonchalance; her fingertips are shaking.  "He would like that search stopped.  Immediately."  
  
"Miyano-san--"  
  
Her sharp glance cuts Megure's voice off mid-word.  "Must I detail what Kid is capable of doing to Hattori?"  She narrows her eyes.  "Call off your hounds, keibu, at least for now.  You can always put them back on later if you want."  
  
Megure frowns, but tips his head at Takagi.  The officer swallows and bolts, the door thudding shut in his wake, and Miyano goes imperceptibly less tense.  
  
Saguru takes a seat at the table, interlaces his fingers, studies the young woman as she sips from her cup again.  The trappings of wealth and fashion are all about her -- high- and lowlights in her tea-blonde hair, the manicured nails, quality clothing and designer accessories (a golden gingko leaf motif over browns and blood-reds) -- but so are the signs of long-term stress.  Her complexion is ashen and dry where her skin peeks out of her collar and cuffs, where she's missed spots with hand lotion and makeup.  Her willowy build, so fashionable and admired, isn't a healthy kind of slender; her collarbones jut prominently under her blood-red dress, her wrists bony and scraped thin under a distractingly chunky watch.  She'd certainly have bruised circles under her eyes if she wasn't wearing makeup.  
  
"So.  How do you appreciate being the emissary for Kid Homage?" Saguru asks mildly.  
  
Her fingers clench on the styrofoam.  "How do you appreciate being his favorite adversary?" she returns in the same soft tone.  Saguru can't stifle the wince, and the corner of her mouth twitches.  "It's better than what else he could get into his head."  She sips again.  "And that's about all that can be said for it."  
  
"Hm."  That's a far cry from Heiji's behavior.  Miyano is certainly not in the grips of Stockholm, and she's not making excuses nor taking blame like an abuse victim would... but she's also notably under his influence, hence her presence.  Saguru can't categorize her relationship with him at all.  "He could've sent his demands by letter, or phone call," he muses, testingly.  "Why you?"  
  
She shoots him a warning glance.  "What makes you think I know?" she asks.  "I'm just the messenger."  
  
To quote the phrase, _bullshit_.  "You're also the one person who knows him well enough to make an educated guess."  
  
Her gaze drops in acknowledgement of the hit.  Slowly, she sets the cup down, leans back in her chair.  "Tactics really aren't my strong point," she says thoughtfully.  "But I suppose I'm not specifically banned, so..."  She folds her hands before her mouth, tips her head, closes her eyes.  "You thought you'd found leverage," she muses aloud.  "A weakness.  A loose end to unravel everything and capture him."  Her eyes and hands flicker open.  "And then he dropped it right into your hands and laughed."  
  
Well.  Put like that.  "I see.  A grand gesture, a declaration of invincibility.  _You thought you had me, but you were wrong_."  It's a literary gesture, in fact, not realistic, and Saguru should be drawing parallels from the classics rather than his work experience.  Which, with Kid Homage in play, means Arsene Lupin, and of course Saguru takes the place of the horribly caricatured Herlock Sholmes, and the central tenet of that compilation of short stories was...  "You are his Sophia, his Blonde Lady."  
  
Miyano's mouth quirks again.  "A bit less of the ' _oh my lady wife, love of my life, I shall sacrifice myself nobly for you if necessary_ ', but I suppose so."  
  
Saguru quirks the same tiny smirk.  "Not his dearly beloved, then?"  
  
Distaste ghosts across her face.  "I wouldn't want to be even if he could."  Before Saguru can ask her to elaborate, she raises an eyebrow at him.  "The Westermarck effect does work in sociopaths."  
  
"Antisocial personality disorder," Saguru automatically corrects.  The Westermarck effect is seen in children raised together, up to six years of age.  Correcting for Kid Homage and Dr. Miyano to remember each other properly, that puts Kid Homage between seventeen and twenty-three years old.  "But you don't suffer from that condition."  
  
"Mm.  Not for lack of trying."  She drains her cup, hesitates, then hefts her purse onto her lap and snaps it open.  Wrapping the cup in a handkerchief, she crushes it and tucks it inside.  "I've said what I can," she says, standing.  "With luck, we'll not meet again.  Good day--"  
  
Saguru's got her wrist before he realizes he's moved.  "Wait.  Wait, you cannot simply--"  Her gaze is shuttered and lizard-cold once more.  "We'll make arrangements for witness protection..."  He knows it's futile even as he says it.  
  
"I'm sure you think that's a kindness," Miyano replies flatly.  She tugs at his grip, not seriously enough to actually break it.  "But I'd rather a quick death, thank you."  
  
"Miyano-hakase..."  
  
This time, she twists free with barely any effort.  "A bit of advice," she offers.  "Murder's boring.  Do your best, and he won't bother to resort to it."  And she leaves, heels clicking just once on the linoleum outside before falling completely, impossibly, silent.  
  
Saguru lets her go.  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
They spend the entire day in the storm drain listening to the (unsuccessful) sweep for bugs, change of rooms, and the continuing investigation (computer search canceled, contacting of MIT graduates from three to six years ago still under consideration, witness statements still being taken and compiled).  Then -- exhausted, but not bedraggled or smelly, after a good bout of fresh costuming and deodorants -- they return to the Beika apartment.  
  
Heiji drags himself out of bed some twelve hours after that, with dim morning light streaming in through a rainy day, so it's good they're out of the runoff system at least.  
  
"--kay, okay, we will totally owe you one, Baachan," Amari's saying, as Heiji lurches towards the coffeemaker.  "No.  One.  _One_ , Baachan.  Yes I know it's a lot of yearbooks, but... Campari's doing the research, so it's mostly a matter of jetsetting and a bit of B&E, it's practically a _vacation_."  He pauses, making faces at the phone, then puts on his best puppy eyes and goes, "Pleeeeeeease?  We wuv oo Baachan."  
  
Heiji can't help but cringe.  "Cut it out, that shit is disturbing," he mutters.  
  
Amari sticks his tongue out at him.  "See, who else can make you laugh like that?  So you'll help out?"  He pauses.  "All right, all right, _Bachan_ ," he laughs, switching the honorific down a generation in age.  "Maybe in a few years we'll even go for Neechan, wouldn't that be flattering?"  Another pause.  "Biting's Campari's job, you know that.  I'll have him email you the details, okay?  Thanks.  Love you Bachan!"  
  
"What was that all about?" Heiji asks, once Amari's hung up and dropped his phone on the table.  
  
"Hm?  Oh, didn't feel like taking you globetrotting, so we called in a specialist."  
  
The mysterious Bachan.  Or Baachan.  "Would this be Zombie-baachan?  Tender nubile young brains with a side of revenge?"  
  
"Bingo!"  Amari's grin shows all his teeth.  "Quite the little memory you've got there.  I rather thought you were paying more attention to the knots."  
  
"Backatcha," Heiji says, because he'd actually had _reason_ to be on paranoid flashback-vivid-recording memory when the twins had their tickle fight and obliquely plotted the systematic murder of most of their associates.  He wonders just how close to eiditic their memories are.  "Zombie?"  
  
Amari waggles one finger at him.  "A secret makes a woman, a woman," he purrs.  "And keeps a twin considerably more breathing than bleeding."  
  
Huh, that almost sounds like there's someone out there the twins actually respect.  And fear a little bit, but without the need to murder all threats in play.  Someone alpha to them.  
  
...  Okay Heiji's just scared himself.  He buries his nose in his coffee and hopes that Amari didn't notice.  
  
Amari's grin widens (dammit, he totally noticed), but instead of commenting, he drops a key and a slip of paper next to Heiji's elbow.  "Hamamatsu Station, coin lockers near the Yamanote Line.  Don't peek."  
  
Heiji eyes the innocuous key suspiciously.  "What favor's this one?"  
  
Amari's grin goes impossibly wide, and he doesn't answer.  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
The next day, Saguru has school.  There's something a little unreal about it, something almost surreal: this weekend he let a little boy die in his arms (suicide for the second time, reality phasing out under Saguru's fingertips), watched another vanish in smoke to return to his captors, met a woman who'd died as a child before his eyes...  
  
And now it's all _good morning sensei_ and _turn in your homework_ and _open your books to page three-hundred-and-ninety-four_.  Quiet, orderly, and hollow.  
  
He escapes the emptiness at lunch, skirting the beautiful girl holding court under a tree.  There's an alcove near one of the fire exits, where a vent hums noisily as it blasts stifling hot air up out of the pavement.  No one except Saguru ever bothers with the spot; the girls have their modesty to think about, and the rest of the boys are either determined to watch girls or smoke during breaks.  The venting is no good for safely lighting a cigarette or keeping it lit.  
  
Saguru, though, wants neither.  He pulls his phone from his pocket and checks his police account.  It's limited, damn his age, but there's a few files uploaded.  Witness statement summaries, an auditorium seating chart (both audience and stage)... a video clip.  
  
It's only thirty seconds long, from a camera watching the table where they'd checked tickets, and even though it should show the person at the head of the line perfectly... it doesn't.  The girl's head is ducked, looking slightly to one side as she signs in, but the low ponytails and dark-toned dress are unmistakeable even in Saguru's tiny screen.  It's Hattori Heiji, in his Reika disguise.  
  
Saguru can't see what Heiji's looking at.  The table and his skirt are in the way, but from the body language, the way his lips move but his attention clearly isn't on the attendant...  
  
Is there a _child_ with him?!  
  
Saguru's out of his police account and on Google before he can think.  It could've been a guest, just some innocent kid he'd struck up a conversation with in line, just a way to naturally keep his face hidden from the camera, and _surely_ \--  
  
Miyano Shiho does not, in fact, have an unlisted number.  
  
 _Bzz bzz.  Bzz bzz._  
  
 _Click._  
  
"Moshi moshi.  Miyano-hakase?  It's Hakuba Saguru."  
  
Her voice, when it comes, is hard.  " _I've told you what I could, Hakuba-san."_  
  
"Perhaps.  Miyano-hakase, is there a..."  Hm, how to phrase this?  "... possibility that Kid Homage could've sent a child someplace in the company of Hattori Heiji?"  
  
" _I will call you back_."  She hangs up without another word.    
  
Saguru pulls his phone away from his ear and stares at it.  That was not a 'no'.  
  
Kid Homage has access to a child.  There is a child... what, complicit in all this?  An unwitting hostage to Heiji's good behavior?  It would certainly add dimension to Heiji's determination to return to captivity.  
  
A child.  Good god.  
  
... But wait.  That doesn't make sense.  Children may be of considerable interest to most neurotypes, between biological and cultural imperatives, but Kid Homage is distinctly atypical.  Why would he tolerate minding a child?  Or, more likely, tolerate the division of Heiji's attention if he were to delegate the task to Heiji?  
  
Saguru pulls up the clip again, and eventually gets a half-clear view of the girl.  She's perhaps six to eight years of age, with too strong a resemblence to Heiji's disguise for it to not be deliberate.  
  
... She looks greatly like the little girl Kid Game Over'd first, actually.  The one who hadn't had a chance to give Saguru her name.  Damn it all.  
  
 _Bzz bzz._  
  
 _"Moshi moshi, Hakuba Saguru_."  Miyano's audibly biting back amusement this time, and Saguru's stomach clenches.  He suddenly has the sinking feeling that he doesn't want Kid's answer.  Miyano doesn't give him a chance to say so, though.  " _He says that you won't believe whatever he says, so think what you like, it's guaranteed to be wrong anyway_."  
  
"He... what?"  That's... frighteningly accurate, come to think of it.  Saguru wouldn't have believed a word of it if Kid had denied the accusation.  Or even if Miyano had, instead of hanging up on him.  
  
" _You're doing a very good job of entertaining him, Hakuba-tantei.  My condolences."  Click._  
  
The flare of pure, unadulterated offense almost makes Saguru hit redial.  But he chokes his temper back down, replacing the phone in his pocket with crisp, tight-muscled movements.  After all, what good would it do?  He's lucky Miyano's willing to be a point of contact between them at all.  
  
Who knows how long _that_ will last, either.  As soon as Kid Homage's whims change...   
  
He sighs and opens his bento.  
  
There's a note inside.  
  
Of course.  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
When Heiji gets back, with the coin-locker's mysterious brown-wrapped parcel tucked in with his schoolbooks like it was nothing of any importance at all, Campari's got the big-screen playing 'Hot Twink Fills Intellectual Gap' _again_.  Looks like it's the Homage Task Force offices this time, which is at least slightly less creepy than Saguru's school.  The screen's filled with men in suits slaving over piles of paper and scribbled-on whiteboards, Saguru's pale hair and brown coat clashing with all the salaryman blues around him.  
  
"Have you eaten yet?" Amari asks, the parcel already in his hands and twine unknotting itself under deft fingers.  "I know there's a good curry place next to the lockers."  
  
"No..." The brown paper falls away, and instead of a block of dried leaves or white powder (unlikely, but the twins have to be getting money _somehow_ ), or a bundle of sensitive documents (which is what Heiji was expecting), there's a glossy paperback inside.  The Night Baron's familiar, ominous mask grins out from under the silver title.  
  
"Hey, aniki!  ARC copy!"  
  
"Finally."  
  
Heiji sputters.  "A _book_?  All that-- I begged you for a freaking _week_ not to poison the kids-- and you sent me to fetch a _book_?  Is it even illegal?"  
  
"Nope."  Then he tears his gaze away from the pages.  "Aw, did you want to be an accessory?"  He ruffles Heiji's hair, ignoring Heiji's horrified stuttering.  "Maybe next time."  
  
"I hate you both."  
  
Amari slings an arm around Heiji's shoulders and drags him to the living room, nose already back in the book, then shoves him onto the couch and flops down half on top of him.  "Nice pillow.  Watch tv."  
  
Campari ghosts out of the kitchen with popcorn and cuddles up on Heiji's other side, a notepad and pen at the ready.  
  
"Do I at least get to see what they're working on?" Heiji grumbles.  Primetime crime drama this is not.  
  
One scribbling and a torn-out page later, Heiji has his answer.  
  
 _North of that picturesque prisoner, pacified and ever ours,_  
 _That golden observer from afar rises above the heated tempests of this floating world._  
  
"Another heist?  Already?"  But Heiji's mind is already chewing through the notice.  Prisoner is obvious, his name's gonna be somewhere in the answer.  Picturesque, though?  _Pacified_?  
  
Golden observer from afar is Hakuba Saguru, most likely.  Floating world implies Edo-period entertainment districts, though, geisha and theaters and brothels, and none of those fit Saguru at ALL.  
  
Argh, what else works-- picturesque.  Picture.  Ukiyo-e.  But how does that tie in to Saguru?  
  
It doesn't.  Okay.  Pictures don't go with Saguru, pictures go with Heiji.  E-Heiji.  And pacified goes with Heiji, too, and that kanji just happens to be ei, so... ei-Heiji?  Eiheiji? ... No.  Eihei-ji.  Eihei's temple in Fukui Prefecture.  
  
North of Eihei-ji in Fukui, that golden observer blahblah.  What's north of Fukui?  Ocean north of the west half, but north of the east half is... Ishikawa.  Kanazawa, that gaudy Iron Chef host, gold leaf, traditional shit, Kenroku gardens, hot springs.  
  
Hot springs would fit the heat and floating stuff.  Since when has Saguru had jack shit to do with...  
  
Heiji groans and bonks his head against the nearest semi-firm surface, which happens to be Amari's shoulder.  "This is the fucking hot spring episode, isn't it."  
  
"Chaos, confusion, and fanservice," Amari agrees cheerfully.  "Got the target yet?"  
  
"No."  What the hell does he know about hot springs?  He can't even remember the name of the big resort town up there that's got a ton of 'em.  
  
Amari flicks his nose and turns his attention to the screen, where Hakuba is fiddling with a laptop and a projector.  "Think diamonds.  Think devout business tycoons.  Think--"  
  
The projector fires up, a flickering, faded image of a statue outlined against sky.  
  
"-- the giant golden Kannon at Kaga," Amari choruses with an unwitting Saguru.  The projector flicks to a close-up of the statue's face, and a red-circled mark right between her carved brows.  
  
"-- _and the Bindi Diamond, a gemstone of uncertain provenance, weighing in at approximately 273 carats_ ," Saguru continues, voice tinny over the speakers.  " _It's widely believed to be synthetic at best, if not dramatized cubic zirconia or even glass; the tourist brochures tend to claim the latter, which may or may not be true_."  
  
"It isn't," Amari murmurs.  
  
" _The claims are as likely to be a matter of security as anything else, and frankly the composition of the stone has little bearing upon the fact that Kid Homage has targeted it_."  
  
"Bingo!  Give the pretty boy a prize."  
  
"Amari, shut up, this isn't MST3K."  
  
Amari grabs a handful of popcorn and stuffs it into his mouth, chewing loudly in a way that doesn't fool anyone a bit.  
  
Silence reigns for several minutes, save for the Task Force's briefing on the tv.  
  
Then, Saguru inclines his head, and finishes a statement with, " _I, of course, will not be accompanying you to Ishikawa._ "  
  
"And in an _amazing_ plot twist," Amari mutters sarcastically.  
  
"You are not gonna kidnap him," Heiji growls.  
  
Amari waves that off with an airy, "Of course not."  
  
Still, Heiji doesn't entirely trust that.  He jabs Amari's arm with one sharp little finger.  "Because I don't need the company," he presses.  
  
Amari snatches his hand up, squeezing just this side of painful.  "You have no imagination, Hei-kun," he says, and smirks.  
  
"... So what _are_ you gonna do?"  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
Saguru wakes with a pounding headache, weak sunshine painting the backs of his eyelids a searing red, and the seat under him thrumming.  
  
Seat?  
  
He gasps fully awake and nearly knocks himself right back out on the window he's propped up against.  "Ow," he mutters.  Outside, snowy fields surrounding clusters of farmhouses race past.  He cannot possibly be anywhere in the environs of Tokyo.  Judging by the angle of the sun, the train is heading in a northerly direction; assuming it's afternoon, he's probably going north-northeast.  Judging from the scenery, he can eliminate a number of train lines from consideration...  
  
Or he could read the red kana scrolling across the LED board at the front of the car.  JR Shirasagi (he knows that line, where is it again?) service to... _Toyama_?!    
  
Saguru stares, automatically reaching for his phone.  Now he remembers.  This is the way to Kaga and Kanazawa.  The Shirasagi travels from Nagoya to Toyama via Maibara, skirting Lake Biwa before it heads north.  He's not even in the same half of the country anymore.  How is this possible?  There's no direct line from Tokyo, much less from his house.  Between ticketing and station transfers and his own unconsciousness, how did he get onto this train at all?  
  
Saguru's fingers brush against paper, wrapped around his phone in his pocket.  What the--?  He pulls it out, unwinds the origami loops, then tugs at the folds until it comes apart in his hands.  
  
  
 _Kannon is not the only golden observer being honored at this party, as you should have noticed in the invitation.  This is your first strike, Tantei-san.  I will not be so forbearing about requesting the pleasure of your company a second time.  As for a third..._  
  
 _Well.  Perhaps a third refusal will see you keeping company with our mutual acquaintance._  
  
 _Kid Homage_  
  
  
Saguru swallows thickly.  He slowly, carefully thumbs out the number, nearly missing the buttons when his hand twitches violently.  "Moshi moshi, Nakamori-keibu.  It would seem that Kid does not care to have his invitations declined."  Outside, gold glints on a head the size of a house, rising slowly over the snowy hills ahead.  "I should be arriving at Kagaonsen station within twenty minutes."  
  
He only half-listens to Nakamori's response -- the man is mostly shouting orders away from the phone anyway -- as he glances around the compartment.  There's his suitcase on the rack above.  (Who'd packed it?  Kid?  Or Baaya under the impression the orders were from Saguru?)  The car itself is more deserted than not, and the occupants mostly not interacting with each other.  Saguru makes note of them all; six are under five foot three, and a pair of tourists in the back are well over six feet tall, so that's eight people who can't be Kid.  There are also two families, who sadly cannot be eliminated from consideration; one is a couple with a sleeping infant in a massive stroller, and the other is a set of grandparents with a little boy between them.  None of them look at all like Hattori.  
  
He wishes he could eliminate them from consideration.  But who says Kid can't have a different child along?  
  
The old man laughs, and leans over to poke at something on the boy's tablet.  Dancing colors reflect faintly off the child's dark face.  "Cut it _out_ ," the boy snaps, shoving his grandfather's hand away.  
  
 _"Kaga Onsen.  This train will be arriving at Kaga Onsen in two minutes.  Please gather your belongings and prepare for arrival.  This train will be stopped at the platform for ninety seconds.  Please move swiftly as you exit the train.  This train will be arriving at Kaga Onsen in ninety seconds."_ The announcement changes to English, repeating itself and counting down, and Saguru stands and pulls his suitcase down from the rack.  
  
The two families and five of the car's occupants -- two of the too-short adults, and three of those within Kid's phenotypic range -- stand and begin gathering belongings, and heading towards either end of the car.  
  
Saguru follows.  
  
The platform is milling with people, despite the weekday timing, and behind that is a line of police.  Said line is funneling people right to the stairs, where the side marked for going down is jammed.  Two of the station's conductor girls have baskets over their arms and polite smiles on their faces.  "Please wipe the back of your hand with the towelette," they rattle off, handing out cheap pre-packaged wipes.  "Wipe thoroughly and show the officer to your right.  Please wipe the back of your hand with the towelette..."  
  
Saguru takes the towelette, rips it open and rubs as requested, then displays his lemon-scented hand to the nearest officer.  "No makeup, you're good to go," the officer says, then does a double take.  "Hakuba-kun!"  He ushers Hakuba quickly past him, tapping someone to take his place.  
  
"I take it this is a Kid Homage checkpoint?" Saguru asks quietly, so the crowd cannot hear over their own low din.  
  
The officer nods.  "We're hoping that Kid is travelling with Hattori-kun, and that he would've chosen to make their complexions match rather than be more memorable."  
  
"Hence a makeup check.  I see."  It would only work if Kid _was_ travelling with Heiji, but given that he would've likely chosen to use a makeup soluble in the cheap towelette's alcohol rather than soap and water... it was a start, at least.  "Have you been at this all day?"  
  
"Everybody since yesterday, sir."  
  
"Good man.  Now, where might I locate Nakamori-keibu?  And lodgings," Saguru adds ruefully.  
  
"We've a car waiting for you at the exit."  The officer smiles, then reaches up with one hand.  "Just one last thing, if I may?"  
  
Oh.  "Of course," Saguru says, and endures having the man attempt to rip off his face.  
  
That done, he returns the favor, then permits the officer to lead him downstairs and to the waiting car.  It's not a police car, but someone's personal vehicle, and Nakamori-keibu is fuming in the passenger seat.  
  
"Hakuba-kun!  Get in, get in, what did he _do_ to you?!"  Nakamori looks ready to bite the Kid should he get in range, which makes something tiny and prickly-soft set up residence somewhere between Saguru's lungs.  It's very, very tiny, though, under the blanket of perfectly reasonable vague offense that...  
  
Well.  Saguru can't really argue his ability to protect himself, now can he.  He was at home, in the Commissioner-General's highly secured house.  "As far as I can ascertain," he replies neutrally, buckling in, "he did nothing beyond whatever was necessary to place me upon that train."  
  
He, fortunately, doesn't feel any aches that can be attributed to something more unsavory than sitting improperly in a train seat for several unconscious hours.  
  
It doesn't make Nakamori-keibu any less growly.  "We've taken over about half that hotel," he grumbles, jerking a thumb at it as they drive by.  "We'll get you settled in later."  
  
Gold gleams, and Saguru looks out the window at the towering statue fast approaching.  "Crime scene first?"  
  
"Crime scene first."  
  
When they arrive, the complex resembles the proverbial kicked-over anthill.  The buildings surrounding the statue's feet are still in good condition, but boarded up and unused; it had once been a sort of religious theme park, not any actual temple, and only the Kannon is still open for use.  
  
The police have opened up the buildings anyway, tearing painted plywood down and vetting a veritable army of local housewives, professional maids, and building inspectors to scour the place.  
  
Nakamori bulls right through the site, Saguru trailing in his wake, and leads him to a man built like a wall.  Taller and broader than Saguru, the man's neck is thicker than his head and his hands can probably cup a newborn in the palm of each.  His suit has stitches visible inside the straining seams.  
  
Saguru is gripped by the sudden urge to just _poke_ the man, to see if the muscles trying to rip his jacket apart actually aren't ludicrous fakes.  
  
"This is Nurikabe-san, from the mayor's office," Nakamori says. "Nurikabe-san, Hakuba-kun."  
  
"No one's allowed up to the stone without me," Nurikabe informs him primly, adding a fussy, "Contract law.  The city's subject to heavy fines if we remove the stone from its compartment."  
  
Saguru blinks.  No wonder the diamond is still in place, despite the rest of the site going to ruin.  "And Kid?"  
  
"We're not liable should the stone be stolen."  
  
Lovely.  God save him from lawyers and accountants.  
  
"Well."  Saguru turns his best slightly-humble look upon the man.  "May we go up, then?"  
  
The interior of the Kannon statue is dark and gloomy, with a clattering metal scaffold-and-stair setup of the kind of industrial diamond-grid slats that eat shoe soles, and tiny platform cages cantilevered out so as to allow single-person access to the occasional viewport.  The cages are currently staffed with construction workers, showering sparks as they weld chains threaded through the interior handles of each viewport.  
  
Saguru finds himself terrified for the life of his beloved Inverness, not to mention his hair, but they make it through the incendiary showers without any conflagration, and reach a single empty platform some three-quarters of the way up the staircase.  
  
There's a safe welded into the wall here, a basic key-and-dial setup which Nurikabe unlocks easily.  It would've been about as secure as a paper screen to the previous Kid 1412, according to what Saguru's been able to glean from the files on the legend, however it may or may not stymie the Kid Homage.  
  
Within the case, a clear faceted stone the size of an orange sits in a wire cage, culet aimed at them and oval crown facing straight out in a bubble of what Saguru deeply hopes is bulletproof and welded-in glass.  
  
"I suppose I know what to keep an eye out for now," Saguru muses.  "Thank you, Nurikabe-san."  
  
"My pleasure."  
  
Later that afternoon, after a quick discussion with the hotel owners ("This is Hakuba-kun, he's a police consultant," "Circumstances have colluded to leave me without lodgings, Nakamori-keibu has been generous and offered me space in his room," "We apologize for the last-minute mix-up."), Saguru changes into the hotel-provided yukata and slips downstairs for an early bath.  Lord knows he'll not likely be energetic enough for one after the heist.  
  
The men's bath is nearly deserted, only a pair of twins Saguru's age soaking in the tub as a dark little boy -- holding a towel to his front and sitting on the large tub's rim -- splashes at them.  They've clearly chosen their own bathing time to allow the child to play without bothering other guests.  
  
"Don't mind me," Saguru says, smiling at them a little.  "It'll be nice to have some good cheer around."  
  
There's very little of said cheer, though, as he picks out a stool and faucet and sets to.  The boy's gone silent, and although Saguru is politely not looking at any of them, he can sense they aren't providing the same courtesy.  
  
He's halfway through washing, rinsing shampoo from his hair, when the nagging itch of being watched gets to be too much.  He glances over his shoulder and raises his eyebrow at the child.  
  
One of the twins splashes a bit of hot water at the boy's posterior.  "Don't stare."  
  
The child doesn't so much as blink, just tilting his head a little.  "His hair's the same color as me," he protests.  
  
That gets bright laughter.  "Not quite, buddy.  C'mon, let him bathe."  
  
"I don't mind," Saguru replies quickly.  He doesn't, really.  If it were the twins staring, that'd be one thing -- lavicious or objectifying, neither of which Saguru appreciates one whit -- but it's just a little kid.  
  
"Do you dye it?" the boy asks, edging a little closer around the tub's rim.  
  
"Nope."  Saguru quirks a smile at him.  "Do you dye yourself?"  
  
"Noooooo!" the boy laughs.  
  
"There you go, then."  
  
With the attention span of a child, the boy flits to a new topic.  "Are you here with all the big men?"  
  
"Big men?"  
  
"Uh huh.  They're loud and lots of them showed up today."  The boy pauses.  "I think they all know each other?"  
  
Ah.  The Task Force.  "Those are Tokyo police."  
  
"All of them?" the boy asks.  
  
At Saguru's nod, the more somber twin asks, "Is there a convention or something?"  
  
"A thief."  
  
"... This seems like a lot of effort for a thief," the other twin says.  He glances pointedly at the oblivious child.  "Should we be worried?"  
  
"No, no, we just need the manpower to cover how large an area he'll probably be operating in."  At the twin's mouthed 'we?', Saguru explains, "I consult with the division familiar with his crimes.  We're here somewhat for our expertise, but mostly so that the local police aren't spread thin.  You should be as safe tonight as any other evening you'd be out and about here."  
  
"Ah, that's a relief.  Thanks."  
  
"You're welcome."  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
When they leave the baths, drying off and tying robes on, Amari humming at a cheerfully high volume and the door firmly slid shut between them and Saguru, Heiji murmurs, "Believeable?"  
  
Campari ruffles his hair.  "Perfect."  
  
Whew.  That's Saguru safe for another few hours, at least.  
  
"So now what?"  Not that it isn't obvious.  
  
"How does movies and snacks in our room sound?" Campari asks.  It's not really a question.  
  
Heiji just sighs.  "I could eat."  
  
They have convenience store bento in their room, as well as enough snacks to please a kendo team, and Amari takes the bento to the hotel's microwave as Campari puts on the news and taps into the Kannon's security feeds.  
  
By the time Heiji is picking at the last bits of his okonomiyaki, the twins -- who ate lightly, sharing a carbonara pasta between them -- are already dressed and wriggling into black jogging suits.  
  
"Be good, buddy," Amari says, dropping a granny kiss on Heiji's head because he's a jerk like that.  
  
"You know how to work the feeds," Campari adds, as Amari pushes open the sliding screen and then the window.  They're three stories up, but the next building over is very nearly in reach (well, very nearly in an adult's reach, Heiji would have to get on his knees on the sill and fall out like a plank to reach anything) (he's sort of horrified with himself that he hasn't even considered it), and no one has an uncovered window because of the lack of view.  They can spider-climb their way down without being seen, and that's clearly what they intend to do.  
  
"Just... don't make too much of a mess, okay?" Heiji asks.  
  
They salute Heiji, matching smirks under matching black caps, then shimmy out the window one-two and into the night.  
  
Three laptops and a pair of tablets, and something that's framed with the shell of an e-reader (not Saguru's) but is actually a very limited tablet of its own... Heiji lines them up on the low table, using their suitcases to lift the tablets to a second level above the laptops, turns down the lights, and curls himself around a pillow to watch the heist.  
  
On the lower left-hand screen, Nakamori-keibu is brandishing handcuffs at Saguru.  Now what's that all about...?

  
-0-0-0

  
Saguru eyes the proffered cuffs with what he hopes is a measuring rather than annoyed -- or, worse, half-panicked -- gaze.  "That's... very paternal of you, sir," he finally decides to say.  "If I may check that you're not disguised first...?"  
  
Nakamori-keibu bristles, then goes a little bit pale.  "Right, right," he mutters as he offers up his face.  Saguru's fairly certain that Kid Homage cannot recreate the stubbly five-o-clock shadow under his palm, not if he wishes to also obtain a realistic human levelness to the skin underneath... and indeed, Nakamori's face pulls and stays attached as flesh properly should.  
  
Though now Saguru's going to be calculating how to make prosthetics with the appropriate bearding and skin texture now, curse it all.  
  
He permits Nakamori-keibu to cuff them together, then follows the man into the Kannon.  Unlike earlier in the afternoon, it's all blazing floodlights inside now.  
  
"We're certain he's going to make the attempt from the interior, then?" Saguru asks, as they spiral up past pairs of officers, all in body armor and mottled facial bruises.  The air is getting noticeably hotter as they go, and Saguru spares a moment of worry for the policemen in the higher levels.  
  
"More like how would we block him flying in to grab it," Nakamori-keibu mutters, chewing on the stub of an unlit cigar.  "Hang men in harnesses off the top of the Kannon?"  
  
Saguru considers the image a scarce moment, then winces.  Kid Homage has been decidedly nonviolent, at least physically, however a man hung from a glorified rope some ten stories above the ground is little more than a sitting duck.  Even if Kid didn't cut the rope, all it would take is one unfortunate entanglement, and you'd have a very effective tourniquet or noose.  
  
"I see."  
  
Higher and hotter, and Nurikabe-san is positioned at the safe door once again.  "A final look, gentlemen," he decrees, opening the safe.  The diamond -- or some reasonable facsimile of it -- remains in place.  
  
Kid Homage is the type to leave the setting glaringly empty should he have already been and gone, therefore he's not yet made his attempt.  
  
"Let's go, then," Nakamori-keibu says gruffly.  
  
Saguru bites back his first, second, and third reaction.  It's not insulting, stifling, or nice to watch an overprotective father in his natural habitat.  Even if Saguru rather felt he should deal with Kid Homage on his own.  He's the Wolf of Europe!  Seventeen and very nearly a man in his own right!  
  
... Kid is a sociopath and Saguru know better than most that anyone can be a target, regardless of weakness or lack thereof.  
  
Clearly the stifling heat is getting to him.  He can better cling to his cold logic in the fresh air, as disparate as water from the confines of the safe's environs, lapping in cool waves as they descend back into the base of the Kannon.  
  
The staircase clatters one final time, as Saguru steps off of it, and that's when everything goes to pot.  
  
Smoke bombs and confetti, glitter and screaming, and over it all a canned voice is chanting _WHO LET DA DOGS OUT?_ and woofing in booming American English.  
  
Nakamori's hand clamps over Saguru's wrist, the cuffs digging into his flesh, and they bolt.  
  
Right, protect the underage sexual harassment target first.  God damn the Kid Homage.  
  
More chaos in the plaza outside, this time with additional life-size inflatables -- Kid Homage, Kid 1412, various Christmas and cartoon character displays -- and several of the solid-color fringed advertisement banners shaped vaguely like people, the kind that flap and billow disconcertingly on fanned updrafts.  
  
Nakamori darts left, then right, then yanks them into a smallish outbuilding between the trees.  There are still a few lingering booth walls set to the side, half-covering the high windows, but the place has been cleaned with a vengeance and these are just the pieces that remain intact.  
  
Saguru swallows around a dry throat, catching his breath and watching Nakamori prowl around the storage space.  No Kid behind the wall panels.  No Kid peeking in through tiny windows.  No Kid eeling in through the floorboard cracks barely large enough for mice.  
  
"I believe we're relatively secure," Saguru murmurs.  "... For the moment."  
  
"Hrm."  Nakamori's radio crackles, and he hits the off button with a vengeance.  
  
"... Sir?"  That's not proper procedure.  
  
Which is when Nakamori turns a bright, sharp, _all too familiar_ grin on Saguru.  "You really should've checked my face _after_ the smoke bombs as well, Tan-tei-san," he purrs, before dropping the disguise.  
  
As Saguru stares, trying not to hyperventilate, Kid swallows, his lips and adam's apple moving oddly in perfect silence.

  
-0-0-0

  
" _Goddammit, aniki, where are you?_ "  
  
Campari smirks, and his subvocalization comes through the line loud and clear.  "I'm going to be a bit late, love."  
  
The gunman doesn't notice.  "Hello, Toichi."  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
Kid Homage's expression flickers, the tiniest chink in the armor, and Saguru moves.  He's still attached by the handcuffs, but that's not much impediment, and he _is_ third dan in judo.  Unarmed combat is his forte.  
  
A flurry of motion later, he's got Kid pinned and hissing on the floor, flat on his monocled face, arm twisted up behind his back just at the edge of dislocating joints.  Saguru's throat stings, the faintest ticklish trickle of blood over his jugular from a wound that Kid had to have pulled at the last second, it's so shallow and yet lethally-placed.  
  
Kid nearly killed him.  On instinct.  Without a visible weapon in play.  Saguru sucks in air, heart thudding, and tries to shake off the horrified blackening tunnel vision creeping in...  
  
Oh.  Oh ruddy fuck.  It's not shock at all.  
  
The hissing gas follows him into unconsciousness.  
  
The next Saguru knows, he's waking in the same storage shed, arms twinging and shoulders going numb.  He's been cuffed to some pipe or other in the ceiling, and Kid Homage is a warm prop against his back, arms looped around Saguru's chest and carrying most of his weight.  His throat and mouth are so dry that when he tries to shout, all that comes out is a pathetic wheeze.  
  
"Naughty, naughty, pretty boy," Kid croons.  Something wet -- Kid's tongue, ugh, no -- follows the blood trail up Saguru's neck, and Kid nips lightly at the angle of his jaw.  "But it's nice to know you can come up with something to play," he slithers around Saguru's body, hands sliding under Saguru's coat and up his spine, rubbing himself against Saguru's front.  His face, in the thin streetlight through the windows, twists into an exaggerated pout. "...When my plans for our amusement don't work out."  
  
Saguru can _hear_ the shouting outside.  Why has no one checked this shed yet?  How long has he been unconscious?  "... If you're attempting to needle me to inquire about these plans..."  he rasps, more air than sound.  What should he say?  He's at a complete loss.  
  
Kid presses one gloved finger to Saguru's lips, which is excuse enough for Saguru to begin trying to work some moisture back into his mouth.  "Hush.  We wouldn't want to spoil the surprise.  Though perhaps we won't play it next time."  Kid tips his head thoughtfully.  "But if I promise not to try it next time, you'll be expecting to be surprised the time after that... unless I decide to break that promise.  How long should I wait to spring such games on you, then?"  His arms slide up, draping over Saguru's shoulders, and one gray-shod foot lifts like a Disney princess.  The move plasters them together from hip to chest, Kid's weight so fully on Saguru that the cuffs bite into Saguru's wrists.  "How will I ever find you so sweetly unprepared again?"  
  
 _Don't bait the psychopath, don't bait the psychopath, don't-_ -  "I don't know," Saguru says, rubbing himself up against where Kid is decidedly not the least bit aroused at all.  "I don't seem to be the only unprepared one here, though."  
  
"Suicidal.  I like it."  Kid nips hard at Saguru's chin, drawing back with traces of blood dark on his mouth.  "Or perhaps hoping you'd rouse my macho temper and clues would fall out?  Boring."  
  
"Worth a shot."  Oh god no wonder Heiji's so deeply under the influence of Stockholm Syndrome.  Saguru himself can't resist engaging the man.  
  
Kid chuckles, then tips his head the other way, listening.  "Ah, Meitantei.  If only my little surprise had worked out."  He slides free, tugs Saguru's lapels back into place, and his fingertips only barely catch at the knot of his tie for a (homicidal?) fraction of a second before smoothing the fine silk.  "Until our next assignation, I bid you _adieu_."  And he vanishes in a puff of smoke, just as someone begins to batter at the door.

  
-0-0-0

  
Meanwhile, Heiji bites the pillow he's clutching, watching the other video feed...

  
-0-0-0

  
"Hello, Toichi."  
  
Campari eyes the trenchcoated, badly moustached man holding a gun on him, keeping his twin's bright Kid Homage grin on his face.  The duplicate Kid cape flutters merrily at his ankles, just enough that Campari can't be certain he won't get tangled up in it if he bolts.  
  
 _Stupid, stupid, never! hamper! your! mobility!_  
  
"Did you somehow _forget_?" the man sneers.  "I suppose ten years is enough for such things to slip even a mind such as yours."  
  
Lovely.  "I believe you've mistaken me for someone else," Campari tells him, with a little effort to match Amari's light-hearted Homage intonations.  
  
"How stupid do you think I am?" the man asks sharply.  The gun glints in the moonlight, shaking with tension.  _How sensitive is the trigger?_ Campari wonders, an empty calm settling over him as the man continues, "You're a fool, Toichi, playing at being your own successor when all you've done is change your costume's colors!  Magician's tricks and nonsense!"  
  
"And yet here you are, having brilliantly seen through it all," Campari says mildly.  
  
"It took a while.  Your smokescreen was good at first," the man admits.  "New stones.  Archeological tablets.  _Children's games._   But now!  The Bindi Diamond!  And after we warned you so politely, too, Toichi."  
  
"Mm, did you now."  
  
"I wonder.  Did it scar, Kaitou Kid?"  Something bright and vicious gleams in the man's eyes.  "How many years did it take to recover?  Are you a patchworked monstrosity under that shadowy monocle?  Too terrifying to return to your lovely wife?"  
  
 _Is the man never going to get around to villain-monologuing useful information?  He seems the type, but it's taking forever._   "I think we're done here," Campari says.  
  
"Not yet," the man snaps.  His free hand lifts, palm empty.  "The diamond.  Toss it over, and I'll spare your life this time."  
  
"The diamond?" Campari echoes.  It figures.  Just another petty thief, nothing interesting to him.  Besides this delusion about Kid Homage, of course.  Campari pulls the stone from his jacket pocket.  "This diamond?"  
  
"Yes, yes, let's have it."  The man makes a little beckoning flicker of the fingers.  
  
"Huh."  Maybe throwing it will distract the man.  Why not.  Campari tosses it, deliberately just close enough to the man's hand that-- yes, he lunges for it!  
  
One spray of gas later, Campari plops himself down on the man's back (maybe he'll suffocate under Campari's weight, won't that be nice) and rifles through his wallet.  Fake ID, yen, bank cards, yawn.  The phone only does text and calls, and turns up a contacts list that reads half like a zoo, half like brothel madams, and a few random takeout restaurants for flavor.  It's all very dull and not at all like someone who'd be able to track either Campari or Amari to this rooftop.  
  
Not without help.  
  
Hm...

  
-0-0-0

  
Heiji's long since been hauled to bed to play teddy bear, by the time the window screen creaks slowly open and Amari presses him into the thin futon.  
  
"It's me," Campari says, and Amari rolls off Heiji and clicks the gun's safety back on.  "Sorry I'm late, you would not believe the traffic."  
  
The twins are gray-on-gray shadows as Amari starts helping Campari strip for bed.  "You missed out on tag-teaming Meitantei.  What was that all about?" Amari asks.  
  
"Eh, some jumped-up flunky ranting about mwa-ha-ha a costume change will not fool him Toichi."  
  
"Wow, crazypants."  Heiji nearly chokes biting back his reaction to Amari calling anybody 'crazy'.  
  
"On the bright side, we've got a new gun."  
  
".... Random nutjobs can't get guns in Japan."  A pause, while Campari's grin slowly widens, teeth glinting pale in the dim light.  "Well.  Isn't _that_ interesting.  What'd you do with him?"  
  
"Knockout, costume change, a bit of paperwork and a dropoff at the hospital, he looks like he escaped from the violent ward and passed out.  We'll see who shows up to bail him out."


	7. Chapter 7

  
  
After the Kannon heist, things go quiet.  
  
On the third day, a petite, short-haired woman in distracting rose pinks checks the moustached assassin out of the Kaga hospital's violent ward.  She crushes the decoy spy camera while waiting for the paperwork to go through, steel-reinforced heel smashing up under her chair in the waiting room, all with a blandly cheerful smile on the sliver that can be seen of her face.  
  
"Possible affectation for pink," Campari muses, curled up in a chair with hands prayerfully steepled before his face.  "Handlebar moustache and a costume straight out of film noir.  Explosives.  Contract work, _statement_ work, a sort of... of homicidal handyman, just skilled enough to make a layman think they're as good as actual professional contractors."  
  
"No wonder we haven't heard of them," Amari says airily.  
  
Campari frowns more deeply.  "We created a power vaccuum, I think."  The smile falls right off Amari's face.  "Who's stepping into it, I wonder."  
  
"Who isn't?" Amari counters.  "It's gonna be a gang war soon enough.  Let 'em pick each other off.  We're through."  
  
"I suppose so."  Campari unfolds himself, and Amari plops into his lap like a very lanky and bipedal cat.  "Heh.  Let's keep an eye on the police reports though, hm?  I'd not like to find a gang war by stepping into a hail of bullets."  
  
"Knives," Heiji can't help but mutter.  
  
Campari just raises an eyebrow and smirks.  
  
The continued surveillance on the police station, over the next few weeks, turns up no signs of a gang war... or, at least, not enough of a pattern for the twins or Heiji to notice if one's starting, though it turns out that Beika has the highest murder rate in the nation, far closer to American levels than anywhere else in Japan.  A quick records check proves that's been the case for at least three years, though.  
  
"Something in the water," Campari grumbles, making Amari snicker.  
  
"There was that one mission--"  
  
" _No_ ," Campari snaps, and Amari drops the subject.  
  
What the police surveillance -- which Amari _will not stop calling_ the Hot Twink Fills Intellectual Gap channel -- does show is the slow trickle of evidence coming in from the COCOON party.  Specifically, the tech department's ongoing work to try to compile something useable from the static that was left of the convention center's security tapes.  
  
Turns out that deleting a sentient AI overclocked the systems and zapped everything, sort of like slicing a large weight off one end of a rubber band and making it go 'sproing!'  All the electricity necessary had been dumped into the rest of the system for a split second when it suddenly wasn't needed to power Noah's Ark.  No way Hiroki had known that would happen.  
  
"Lucky us," Amari says.  
  
"We're relying on coincidence now, are we."  Campari looks like he's eaten a lemon.  
  
Amari's eyes fly wide, and he puts a palm to his cheek in mock horror.  "You mean you didn't avoid the cameras?" he gasps.  
  
It devolves into a wrestling match that upends the sofa and gets Heiji firmly wedged between broad pectorals, and it takes a week to find everybody's shirts.  
  
And then, one day in late December, Amari puts his fussy mother disguise back on and takes Heiji out to Ekoda, whereupon he hands Heiji a bright blue kiddie camera, folding Heiji's small fingers around it and tying the security strap firmly around his wrist.  "Have fun, Hei-kun," he says sweetly, giving Heiji a little shove towards Ekoda High, which is in session this one half-day longer than Beika Elementary, hand smacking against his thick coat's back just a little too hard.  "Be back by lunch, and don't let Hakuba see you."  
  
 _Fat chance of that_ , Heiji thinks grumpily.  Campari's tucked a little beeper into his pocket, some unholy meld of GPS and the Hot Twink Fills Intellectual Gap bugs at the high school, and it'll go off whenever he and Saguru have a line-of-sight on each other.  
  
Why the twins aren't just taking screencaps off the HTFIG feed, he does not know.  
  
... Strike that, he can deduce at least two reasons they're sending him a-spying.  Three if you count 'teehee living dangerously is fun'.  So three, then: the other two are 'keep people from realizing they've bugged the school/station' and 'corrupt Heiji into a life of crime', the latter of which is fucking _working_.  
  
He plasters on a vapid grin, widening his eyes and hoping it comes across as playful and excited, and wanders into the flow of pedestrian traffic.  Back and forth across the sidewalk, snapping pictures of anything remotely bright or shiny -- mostly holiday window displays -- Heiji slowly circles the school grounds.  Every half-block or so, he gets a shot of the building, with a bit of the sidewalk's stuff, like road signs and electric boxes and guard rails, in the way so that it's clearly not from Google street view.  
  
The beeper chirps, and Heiji ducks behind a parked car.  This side of the school has only one level of classrooms, a line of curtained windows above what looks to be a rainy-day gymnasium, on the far side of the school's surrounding wall.  
  
Only one of the classrooms has open curtains, and from here Heiji can just barely see the upper corner of a blackboard at one end.  From where he was standing at the beep... the only way someone could see him through the window would be if they had a seat in the opposite windowside corner, one of maybe four seats in the back of the class.  
  
Heiji climbs up onto the retaining wall of the house behind him, winter-bare rhodendron branches jabbing into his spine, and zooms in to get a shot of that back window.  A smudge near the bottom of the grainy display might be someone's hair, but not Saguru's.  Not that that'll make it any less terrifying whenever Kid gets around to using the pictures.  
  
He jumps back to the ground, quickly takes a shot of a cat in the next driveway, and hurries on to reach a public rooftop with a view before gym class starts.  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
Saguru cannot concentrate on the teacher's droning review, even with the promise of a mere two hours to go.  
  
Something had derailed the Kid's plans at the last heist.  The chances of that something being anything the police had done were laughable, at best... so what could it have been?  
  
He can't stop picturing that odd silent movement of Kid's mouth and throat, right when the thief dropped the Nakamori disguise.  It had looked like someone just learning how to use a subvocal recognition system, in that irritating stage where they'd made themselves impossible to lipread but had yet to master disusing their mouth.  But who'd he been speaking to?  Hattori?  
  
And then there was the reaction.  That miniscule flinch, the crack in Kid's armor and attention, the scarcest flicker of an opening that had allowed Saguru to tackle and actually get hold of him... the crack in Kid's control that had nearly gotten Saguru's throat cut on pure instinct.  
  
What could possibly have gotten to Kid, in that split second, so that his attention and control would slip and he'd be left scuttling his plans?  
  
... Is Hattori okay?  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
"Your skeevy creeper pictures, oh lord and master," Heiji intones, tossing the kiddie camera clattering onto Campari's desk.  Before he can get back out of range, Campari tugs him onto his lap and pins him in place.  
  
"Good boy.  Come hunt with me."  
  
Heiji squirms away, because he does not want to know if it's a weird fold in the zipper of Campari's jeans or if he just gets off on whatever the hell he's looking at on the computer.  Obituaries, it looks like.  "Do I want to know?"  
  
"Looking for a ten-years-dead Toichi," Campari replies.  "Apparently that's Amari's muse."  He clicks into another tab, a lurid headline and photograph of a charred stage.  "This one's the best fit so far."  
  
Kuroba Toichi, world-famous magician, died in a freak accident during a show.  Height, weight, and build are all unnervingly close to the twins', and his face...  "Um."  He could be Kudou Yuusaku's brother, and the twins have more resemblence to that pair than Heiji does to his own father.  
  
"A fiery explosion in front of an audience of hundreds," Campari scoffs, "when it would've been so much simpler to arrange for a carbon monoxide accident one night at home."  
  
"You're not discounting murder yet," Heiji points out.  
  
"There are a lot of idiots doing my job."  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
When Saguru finally reaches work -- snow flurrying in the beams from streetlamps, low clouds making the mid-afternoon seem like dusk -- there's a pile of inter-office mail waiting in the box to be taken upstairs.  He takes it and shuffles through it on the elevator.  
  
Memo, memo, accounting (probably another pithy demand to justify the addition of the Task Force to the budget), risk management (almost certainly a complaint about the cost of liability for Saguru), manila envelope... Saguru drops that one on Nakamori's desk, setting the rest of the pile in the man's in-box.  
  
"What's this, then?" the man asks gruffly, rhetorically, picking it up and slicing the flap open.  Another file slides out, this one clipped shut with a letter on top.  
  
Saguru sees the distinctive caricature first.  
  
  
 _Two colors dear to Saturn_  
 _in the land of maiden's birth._  
 _One maiden blue,_  
 _crowned third of the world._  
 _Three men of wisdom_  
 _born brightest celestia._  
 _Four frozen dawns_  
 _look south, and south again._  
 _On that fifth starlit house,_  
 _the high moon takes the queen._  
  
  
Growling, Nakamori pulls off the paperclip, opens the folder, and blanches dead white.  
  
Aoko on a crowded train platform, in her school uniform.  Aoko at school.  Aoko in gym class, breath fogging in icy air as she does calisthenics in her shapeless winter tracksuit.  The front gates of Ekoda High.  The classroom window, specifically the back window near where Saguru and Aoko both sit, with a student just visible inside.  A tiny single-family home.  A close-up of the home's nameplate, Nakamori, and the address.  A Google map printout with the same address visible on the page and pushpin helpfully colored bright red.  A second letter.  
  
 _p.s. - Let's not block Hakuba Saguru from our little dates again, hm?_  
  
The desk trembles under Saguru's fingertips, edges of his vision going red.  "I'll call and check that she's home, shall I," he hears himself say as if from very far away.  
  
" _I'll_ call." Nakamori slaps the folder shut, mostly hiding the disheveled stack of pictures once more, and shoves the cover notice into Saguru's hands so roughly it slices open paper cuts on the pads of Saguru's palms.  " _You_ nail this fucker."  
  
Right.  Focus.  He can do this.  (Now there's no choice--) and the world narrows down to the notice, nothing but pure thought.  
  
Set aside the allusion to Nakamori Aoko, set third after work and the Kid in her father's life.  
  
It's four days til Christmas, and the note is clearly seasonal from the Three Wise Men line, which also presumably would allude to Kid, Heiji, and Saguru himself: three geniuses, two rising stars in crime-solving and of course Kid Homage's own increasing infamy.  
  
Christmas was, as a date, most likely chosen in ancient, pagan Europe as the first day that the sun visibly rose earlier after its solstice (sun-stop) pause to reverse direction.  Four frozen dawns puts the date of the heist as certainly Christmas, then, the fourth morning after solstice.  
  
Gemstones, two colors, dear to Saturn... sapphire, shani-priya in Sanskrit, is one of three named distinctions in corundum, the third-hardest mineral in the world, but of those three only two count as precious gems, sapphire and ruby.  Pink padparascha is inexplicably only semi-precious.  
  
A sapphire, then, from India where the name had its origin.  Presumably a very large one, third largest in the world most likely.  
  
Saguru pulls up Wikipedia and checks the list of the world's largest gems.  Number 3 is, indeed, the Blue Birthday, which is the largest sapphire owned by India.  It's currently on display in a museum house in Yamate, the historic foreign quarter of Yokohama, the second city south (south and south again) of Tokyo.  That must be it, the note has the word 'birth' for a reason, so...  
  
Date.  Location.  Target.  Exact time... fifth starlit house.  That means nighttime, and sunset is currently at about 16:30; on Christmas it'll be at 16:34 pm.  A house, zodiacally speaking, is two hours long; does he truly mean to appear at 2:34, or within the span from 2:34 to 4:34?  Or does he perhaps mean to measure from one of the twilight times (17:02, 17:34, 18:05 for civil, nautical, and astronomical respectively), which would give a ten-hour count of... 3:02, 3:34, and 4:05 respectively.  
  
Perhaps he means to count hours, not zodiac houses.  The hour has its roots in Egyptian timekeeping, sundials dividing a sunlit day -- or half a terrestrial rotational period -- into ten units plus two twilight units, plus twelve full-dark decan periods for the night based on rising stars.  (And there is that third couplet once more.)  The same twelve-unit system was common in Sumer and India, as well... so perhaps Kid means to count simple hours.  
  
Five hours from sunset, 21:34.  Two colors, one maiden, three men, four dawns.  
  
Saguru hisses quietly through his teeth.  _Got you, you utter shite_.  
  
The world buzzes back into existence, angry officers swarming Nakamori's little office and forensics dusting the envelope at Saguru's elbow.  
  
" _Otousan_!" he hears dimly over the din, somewhere outside the office.  "What has that--" Nakamori Aoko goes off into a spate of furious, blue-tinged language a girl her age really shouldn't be using.  
  
Saguru swallows hard, because...  
  
Heiji is a fait accompli, and Saguru can sort of distance himself with the fact that he and Heiji both had known exactly what they were pitting themselves against, turning to detective work. Even if they'd been expecting desperate murderers, not Kid Homage.  Nakamori Aoko has no such choice.  She's nice enough, though she tends to blow hot and cold towards Saguru depending on some incomprehensible psychological rubric relating to how much overtime the Task Force has required recently, but she shouldn't have caught the Kid's attention on her own merits.  
  
Kid has to be counting on them noticing that.  
  
 _How far would I go to shield her?_  
  
 _... How far has Heiji already had to?_  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
Christmas morning.  T minus 12 hours.  
  
After presents (the crowning star being a replacement for the e-reader Kid had stolen, upgraded to the best available model and loaded with Saguru's missing ebooks and the latest Night Baron release) and breakfast, Saguru and his father settle in with coffee, _How The Grinch Stole Christmas_ playing quietly on the tv.  
  
They rarely have any time to themselves as it is.  Even Christmas isn't exempt from the demands of the law.  But, for as long as Saguru could remember, he and his father have made a point of taking this single half-hour to watch The Grinch together... even if it's on either end of a phone line, six thousand miles apart.  
  
" _And the Grinch... the Grinch himself... carved the roast beast_ ," Boris Karloff finishes warmly, and the music swells to the Whos' Christmas song, credits rolling.  
  
Saguru's father takes the drained coffee mug from Saguru's hands, setting it and his own on the table, then leans back against the couch and turns a serious look on Saguru.  
  
 _I am not going to like this._  
  
Three whirlwind hours later, Saguru's packed tightly among the early New Years' travelers on the monorail to Haneda Airport, instead of enjoying Baaya's Christmas feast or preparing for the Kid Homage heist.  He has precisely ninety-three minutes to make his way through ticketing and security, but at least he need not check any luggage.  (He spares a minute to give grudging thanks for the improvements in technology, that he may carry his full library and a computer in a messenger bag, and thus while away long flights without the necessity of sleep aids.)  
  
The airport is stark and echoing with the crowds, all new glass and steel construction with no sign yet of wear.  Saguru lets himself loathe it for just a moment, for not being his warm house or the familiar environs of the police station, then squares his shoulders and heads off to the queue for his airline.  
  
The queue's fairly long, however it's moving quickly, and Saguru steps up to the counter soon enough.  He opens his passport and gives his name, and the smiling attendant types it into the computer.  And pauses.  Checks the passport and types again.  
  
"Er, okyaku-sama..."  Her smile falters.  "Are you sure your reservation is for today?"  
  
"Yes."  Now what's gone wrong?  
  
She types into the computer for a few more minutes, then, "I'm not showing any records, and I'm afraid there isn't anything more I can do here," she tells him apologetically.  "We have a customer service office in baggage claim, if that's all right...?"  
  
It's hardly her fault.  "I will manage," Saguru replies, trying to sound reasonable about it.  He's not sure how well it works, but he bobs a quick bow and stalks off in search of escalators down.  
  
A weaselly little man melts out of the crowd at his elbow.  "Going somewhere?" he asks in Kid Homage's voice, and Saguru startles so badly he nearly knocks over an oncoming passenger.  "And without saying goodbye," Kid mock-sniffles, one hand under Saguru's elbow to haul him back into place.  "I'm disappointed.  My tantei, running away, leaving Hei-chan to face the brunt of my attentions all on his lonesome..."  
  
It hits Saguru like the proverbial thunderbolt.  "You deleted my ticket."  
  
"Deleted is such a crude term," Kid replies, gesturing airily with his free hand.  "Boring, too.  It was much more amusing to get your passport."  Saguru goes cold.  "I wouldn't try to get through customs with that one, by the way.  I might've forgotten an authentication detail or two, you never know."  
  
Now _that_ is considerably more serious a crime.  The things Kid could do with an authentic ID for the son of Japan's national chief of police...  Saguru needs to deflect that line of thought.  "You won't let me leave the country.  Not even to visit my mother."  As if Kid would believe the visit was so innocuous or temporary.  
  
Kid sighs happily.  "So clever.  And stoic," he adds, as he lets Saguru swerve them away from the escalator down to baggage claim.  "Most people would be throwing a fit right about now.  Makes a little thief's heart go pitter-pat."  He flutters his free hand vaguely over his chest.  "And anyway, I never did see the point of parents.  Father was a puppet with two masters... or three, I suppose, depending on how you count... and Grandfather was a _bore_."  
  
A terrible curse, indeed.  
  
"Well, so was Father, really," Kid muses aloud, tapping an index finger coquettishly against his cheek.  "It was all about bang-dead with them.  Bullets and efficiency," he scoffs.  "What is so efficient about going through targets like tissues?  No imagination."  
  
If they do another circuit of the ticketing floor, security will take notice.  The ersatz Edo-period mall upstairs, all of a dozen tiny box stores strong, will make it easier for Kid to escape... but will also minimize the need for him to get creative (read: dangerous) in said escape.  
  
The escalator isn't empty, but it's rather less crowded than the ticketing floor.  Kid lets Saguru slip free once they're firmly between the glass enclosures, and turns to lean on the moving railing.  "Have you ever modified an airsoft to shoot plugfuls of needles?" Kid asks, peering up at Saguru.  "The heavy-duty tapestry kind work best, especially if you sharpen them properly.  Grandfather didn't appreciate it much, though he really didn't get a good look.  It's best to aim for the face on the first shot, see."  
  
Saguru blinks.  _He did not just imply._..  Kid's expression is perfectly level, perfectly knowing, and yes indeed he _did_ just imply he'd murdered his own grandfather, and in a way that Saguru will be able to track all too easily.  
  
"Happy Christmas, Saguru-kun," Kid purrs as they step off the escalator, and he slips an envelope into the inner pocket of Saguru's Inverness, warm fingers brushing firmly against the thin cotton of Saguru's shirt.  "See you tonight."  
  
A second later, Kid's vanished into the crowds.  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
The envelope turns out to hold another picture of a house and accompanying map.  
  
It's the safehouse Aoko's been staying at for the last three days.  
  
No one tries to keep Saguru from the heist after that.  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
The Blue Birthday is on display in a historic building in Yokohama, a Meiji-period home with distinct Indian influence.  It was built by a British administrator fresh from the Raj, and its gleamingly restored white stucco, large windows designed to take advantage of cross-breezes, and quirky meandering floorplan will make lighting the place ideal for Kid Homage's purposes.  
  
The ongoing snow flurries will not help, either.  
  
Saguru pulls his coat tighter about himself and stifles a shiver.  There's minimal heating in the house -- it was turned into a museum piece while cast-iron radiators were still the fashion, and for budgetary reasons the system is only allowed to run just enough to keep the pipes from freezing and cracking -- and the influx of police and spotlights is doing very little to improve conditions.  The spotlights are outside, melting the snow in their environs rather than snaking trippable cords all over the antique floors and blocking traffic in the small rooms; as for the police, their combined body heat doesn't balance out the gusts of frigid air every time an officer enters or exits the house.  
  
Of course, the temperature isn't the only reason Saguru has to shiver.  The Blue Birthday is twinkling malevolently across the room, the showpiece of the lady's boudoir.  It's the exact shade of Kid Homage's visible eye.  
  
"How are you holding up?" Nakamori asks gruffly, stepping up sidelong to Saguru.  One of the trio of officers arrayed around Saguru tugs at the inspector's face.  
  
"Admirably, I suppose," Saguru answers.  Nakamori yanks at the three officers in turn, eyeing them like a dog considering whether or not it needs to bite.  "I've yet to run screaming into the night, at least."  Which he suspects would be a decidedly foolish move, now that he's caught the Kid Homage's attentions.  
  
Nakamori grumbles something unintelligible, then checks his watch.  
  
Saguru doesn't really need to, but his eyes flick to the heavy-duty dial.  21:33 and 28 seconds... 30... 32...  
  
And that's when the first shouts go up, somewhere downstairs.  " _It's smoke, it's just smoke!_ " crackles over Nakamori's radio.  
  
"Gas masks at the ready!" Nakamori snaps, matching word to action.  Saguru pulls his own from his pocket, just as more yells go up.  
  
The noise is from two squads, just near the top of the stairs to the attic nursery and far in the back near the kitchen respectively, if Saguru's got the echoing right.  Nakamori's radio hisses and pops with men coughing, plastic clattering as they pull the masks over their heads.  Whatever they're saying goes unintelligible.  
  
Saguru's fingers are shaking, white-knuckled on his mask.  The filters are only meant to last about ten minutes, enough to get out of the danger zone, but that won't work if it's gaseous fentanyl.  The molecule's too large and will plug up the filter, cutting off oxygen and effectively causing the same -- albeit a considerably safer -- loss of consciousness.  Either way, it would result in being unconscious in Kid's presence.  
  
He can see the smoke cascading in slow ripples down the stairs, out in the hall... for all of fourteen seconds, then something hisses under the radiator and suddenly white smoke engulfs their room.  
  
It tastes only like ice, in the scarce two seconds it takes for Saguru to pull the mask over his head.  Hands catch at his coat -- three points, _three_ , it's the officers not the Kid -- and as quickly as the smoke goes up, it settles into a swirling frigid river of mist around their ankles.  
  
The Birthday's still there.  Nakamori stomps over, opens the case and peers in with a jeweler's loupe, hems and haws.  "Still sapphire," he finally declares.  He eyes the pooling mist.  "Trapdoors, loose floorboards--" he grumbles something indelicate and stomps at the boards underfoot.  
  
They're all looking at the floor, Saguru suddenly realizes, snapping his head up.  The ceiling is in fact the underside of the thick floorboards above, and Saguru doesn't know if it's nails or mortis-and-tendon construction.  The former would make it possible for Kid to remove floor joists and slither in from above.  
  
But the ceiling's undisturbed.  
  
Where will Kid be coming from, then?  
  
The ruckus over the radio continues, slowly fading into confusion.  It sounds like every room's been hit by the smoke bombs, but that's it.  
  
There's no sign of Kid.  
  
Saguru's pounding heart slows, and he feels the cops arrayed around him settle, tension narrowing, _focusing_...  
  
There's only one person who's gotten anywhere near the Birthday.  They only have his word it's still the Birthday.  And Kid's impersonated him once before already.  _Nakamori-keibu_.  
  
As Nakamori-Kid's brows beetle, the man starting to frown uncomprehendingly under the men's stares, Saguru drags his gas mask back off.  "Step away from the Birthday, please."  
  
"Hakuba-kun?"  
  
"Now."  
  
The tinest hiss, and this time the smoke that belches out of every corner of the room is dove gray.  Saguru yanks the mask back on, tasting something sickeningly sweet as everything goes dim.  
  
Someone catches him under his elbow as he staggers, pulling him stumbling to one side (that way was the door, right?) away from Nakamori-Kid (???) into the gray where the floor pitches and yaws underfoot back and forth and swooping uuuuuup over his head like one of those classic cartoons with the anthropomorphic sailor in high seas and his head stays exactly in the middle of the screen while the deck goes spinny splashy swoop in great arcs around and around and his floppy feet are always on the planks and his body's perfectly straight pointing at his head and his neck somehow slides right around his cranium  
  
oh bloody fuck the sweet taste is _inside_ the mask  
  
he lifts a Mickey-Mouse hand to shove at the mask, slapping air, then air again, then -- _ow_ his ear and the cartoon shipdeck bites sharp corners at his ankles, ow ow ow ow ruddy _fuck_ ow--  
  
stairs  
  
the world finally tips his head out of the center of the universe, something soft thumping his side from knee to mask, then spins again with the softness rolling under his legs and back and then sitting him up, thick warmth pressing against his spine and thinner tendrils curling heavily over his spread thighs and around his chest and his head falls forward and the mask falls away  
  
That first clean breath blows the cobwebs out of Saguru's head.  The second clears his vision, blurry shapes resolving into the sloping ceiling and white-painted balcony doors of the nanny's attic room.  Streetlights cast a yellowed glow over the colorless walls, gleaming streakily in the hazy limp sheers over the doors' glass inserts.  He's sitting propped up upon the nanny's bed, legs akimbo over the crocheted coverlet.  
  
The limbs holding his legs open are clad in dove-gray, with gray suede shoes tapping a syncopated idle rhythm with their toetips.  
  
"Kid," Saguru rasps.  Something hair-thin twitches away from Saguru's throat, just enough for metal to flash in the very lowest periphery of Saguru's vision before settling back in, and Saguru goes very, very still.  
  
That.  Is a very long knife.  
  
"I take it you've obtained the Birthday," he says carefully.  What does Kid want?  Why's he still here?  (Saguru's legs are open and he doesn't dare move and Kid has a free hand.  It's currently wrapped around his chest, propping him up against Kid plastered against his back, but Kid has a free hand and Saguru's legs are open.)  
  
That free hand slides upwards, goosebumps trailing in its wake under the fine fabric of Saguru's dress shirt, then gloved knuckles tip his chin back so Saguru's head rests on Kid's shoulder.  It bares his throat entirely to the blade, but also redistributes Saguru's weight so that he won't fall forward onto the knife should Kid.  Perhaps.  Take liberties.  
  
He doesn't feel any telltale hardnesses at the apex of Kid's legs, there pressed lightly up against the sloped flesh over Saguru's sacrum, but that doesn't particularly reassure him.  There are theories that Jack the Ripper was impotent and used his blade as a sexual proxy, theories that come from how often that's been the case with others in the subsequent century.  
  
Kid's hand slips low once again, arm sliding around Saguru's chest in that horrid parody of a comforting hug, and he goes still.  
  
Silent.  
  
The sinister monocle is a second sharp blade -- so much thicker, so much safer -- in the curve of Saguru's cheek.  The charm, which Saguru has yet to see the emblem upon, is lost somewhere in the folds between collar and nape, but with every breath shared unevenly between them, its chain plucks pinprick downy fuzz from the sensitive flesh angling back from his ear, just on the bared skin below his hairline.  
  
A spotlight sweeps across the balcony doors, room going bright white for a split second, and the sheers go opaque, a drifting curtain of dove-gray.  Kid Homage stands freely, all razor grin and shining glass and gloved hands nonchalantly in his pockets.  But if he's there... who's still holding Saguru open with a knife to his throat?  
  
Kid's knee lands on the bed between the unknown's ankles, which remain low on Saguru's thighs.  "A wire, Meitantei?" he purrs.  A second blade flashes in his hand, hooked tip sliding lightly between Saguru's submaxillary triangles, from chin to Adam's apple (one good shove upwards and the blade would bifurcate Saguru's brain), then lower (hyoid, thyroid, cricoid, cloth).  With scarcely any effort, the cruelly sharpened hook slices up right through the practical nylon of Saguru's tie, and the knotted fabric slithers free and puddles upon Saguru's crotch.  
  
"Such a pity, Nakamori-keibu noticed almost immediately when I switched myself for you.  And here I worked so hard to do justice--" Kid giggles "-- to you and match _perfectly_."  
  
Flick, flick, flick, plastic buttons scattering into the depths of the antique bedding.  Kid leaves Saguru's shirttails mostly tucked in, pulling the two halves of his ruined shirt apart just enough to -- upon flipping the blade backwards -- catch Saguru's undershirt with the tip of the knife and shred it to his trouser waist.  
  
The wire is stark black on Saguru's skin, easily visible even in this little light.  It's mostly taped near Saguru's waist, with one almost perfectly flat microphone taped over his nipple, and when Kid's gaze lands on that his grin cuts just the slightest bit wider.  
  
"Why, _Meitantei_!" he gasps in mock-scandal.  "For me?  You shouldn't have!" he trills.  Then, "And where did they put the battery pack, shall I check?"  He pauses, eyes flicking over Saguru, pausing at the very few places where nothing's visible and the unknown captor isn't touching.  He turns his head to look at Saguru's lower legs.  "Was the technician clumsy about it?"  
  
"Perfectly professional," Saguru replies quickly.  Too quickly; Kid looks back at Saguru's upper, inner thighs.  Saguru squashes his panic and manages a put-upon sigh.  "I did tell them that was a stupid place to put the battery."    
  
"Hm."  
  
Saguru has _every sympathy_ for women right now.  'Like a piece of meat' has never felt so apt, nor has a zipper fly ever felt so flimsy.  
  
But, instead of going for the obvious button-and-zipper (and removal of trousers down to the entrapping Kid's ankles), Kid simply slices Saguru's upper inseam, precisely over the state-of-the-art battery pack.  It's half the thickness of a hip flask, the already-undersized kind they were selling at tween girls' fashion shops in London some five years back, and shouldn't have been visible in the generous cut of Saguru's slacks at all.  
  
Kid does break a great many 'shouldn't's'.  
  
As Kid rips the battery pack free and pops the wire jack out, then begins to do the same with the leads taped to Saguru's torso, Saguru tries to distract himself from how the Kid's fingers are tickling his waist, and how they're going in a lowest-to-highest pattern that's clearly leaving the nipple mike for last.  
  
The easiest way to distract himself, is to think of something entirely different.  Or as different as he can manage in the situation.  He casts about for that something, and gets, "If you're... you..." he asks, because he suddenly has a very bad feeling about the answer, "then who...?"  
  
Kid flicks a chiding look over Saguru's shoulder.  "Didn't you introduce yourself, love?"  
  
"Pretty sure he already knows," Hattori Heiji replies.  
  
"Heiji?!" Saguru twists to look, but Heiji catches him by the chin before he can slice his own throat open.  "Heiji, what--?"  
  
"Hold still."  
  
"You don't have to do this!"  
  
Kid snickers at that, shaking his head as he disentangles wiring, hooked blade flashing in unnervingly ignored arcs near Heiji's enclosing forearm.  "Two minutes," he warns.  
  
" _Heiji_ \--!"  
  
"Got an offer I couldn't refuse," Heiji answers simply, shrugging warm against Saguru's back.   
  
An offer he...?  "Nakamori Aoko," Saguru breathes, and Kid smacks his stomach with the flat of the knife.  
  
"Saying another woman's name in bed?"  He tsks.  "Now that's just rude, Meitantei."  
  
Saguru _will not let_ himself be drawn into banter.  He _won't_.  He--- stops breathing as Kid stabs the knife into the mattress between Saguru's legs, his zipper the only thing between certain important bits of anatomy and the sharp edge of the blade.  
  
He wishes, for one wild and breathless moment, that he had an embarrassing micropenis that he could consciously tug right up into his pelvic cavity.  God the knife is pressing the zipper firmly enough that he can feel the bite of the teeth through two layers of fabric.  
  
Four layers.  He has no space to cringe away further, as Kid tucks his shirt flaps properly back into place, suede rough against his stomach and fingers cupping--  "Ow."  Saguru manages to keep it deadpan, very nearly bored, through some miracle of willpower and utter certainty that showing the pain will make things worse.  
  
Kid doesn't make any of the comments Saguru's gotten dozens of times in locker rooms and bathhouses since puberty.  He merely sets to, tugging the shirt gently closed over the remains of Saguru's undershirt, and begins to pin it as if buttoning up a lover's clothing.  
  
The brooches look like they could've come from the lady's boudoir, from costume pieces scattered decoratively across the vanity for atmosphere, much like the satin robe draped over the bed or the set table in the dining room downstairs.  They aren't from the boudoir, though.  Saguru had taken an accounting of every item in the house, and although these are clearly vintage pieces from the 1920s and 30s, none of them are from the site.  
  
A fan, in bronze and blue stones.  A pewter flower with pearl center.  A silver art deco piece that looks like it came straight from Emerald City.  A Red Cross pin.  A--  
  
"Twenty seconds," Heiji murmurs.  
  
\-- A jade scarab with enameled wings.  And, as Kid pinches Saguru's collar a little too tight, lightly scraping the very point of the pin under Heiji's knife, a glass bluebird with red crest.  
  
"Best not move, hm?" Kid says.  "You don't know what we've left behind you."  And the pair of them roll free, bed bouncing under their weight (Saguru yanks the knife free before it can dislodge from its position against his zipper, sending it skittering to and across the floor), and vanish.  
  
The door bangs open.  "Police!"  
  
"Don't shoot don't shoot it's just me!" Saguru shouts, ducking and covering his head.  (The bedding under his face is still warm from Kid's body.)  
  
Someone in the swarm clearing the room has a radio squawking staticky updates.  " _It's Kid, he's on the roof, it-- he-- there's_ four _of him, what the fu_ \--"  
  
No, no there isn't, it's all smoke and mirrors and _Heiji_ \--  The bed shudders under Saguru, something raspy and horrible echoing in his ears and throat, and oh he's _laughing_ god _why_.  
  
"Hakuba-kun?"  Someone's hand lands heavy on his back.  
  
Saguru finds himself halfway across the bed, breathing harshly through a tight throat.  His hand still stings from where he'd slapped Nakamori-keibu's away.  "... Keibu...?"  Oh good lord what is he doing.  "My... my apologies.  Keibu."  Slowly he drags his legs together, letting his hand fall.  (The bed is empty except for himself, of course Kid didn't leave anything, of course--)  
  
Nakamori straightens.  "I know better than to go grabbing at--" he clearly bites back the word 'victims' "-- _people_ like that," he replies gruffly, which is better than most apologies.  "What did that bastard do?"  
  
"He."  Saguru knows the importance of immediate reporting.  He _knows_.  Delays lose details.  But he can't, he just can't.  "Brought company.  Of course Kid..."  He waves vaguely at himself, at the missing buttons and trousers sliced neatly high on his inseam, the glittering brooches and the knife still wobbling on the floor near the nanny's dresser.  "... well.  But the one... the _second_ Kid, with the k-knife at my throat...  
  
"That was Heiji."  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
"I cannot fucking _believe_ you guys."  From his perch on the kitchen counter, Heiji kicks at a giggling Amari's knee, scrubbing dark makeup from the man's face and not being at all gentle about the latex pieces coming off with it.  "They're going to think that's me!  My _mom's_ going to think that's me!"  Which is not going to dissuade the bastards, since that had been the point.  Also, " _Not one word_ about parents and boredom," he snaps, pointing one tiny finger at Amari's nose and ignoring the playful piranha snap that leaves the very tip slightly wet.  "I _do not care_ right now.  You _trashed my rep_!  What do you have to say for yourself?"  
  
Amari beams.  "I got to hold a knife to his throat!"  
  
"You don't deserve t' hold so much as a blade of _grass_ to it right now!" Heiji shoots back. It makes no sense but since when did screaming arguments ever do?  
  
Campari, master of timing, chooses that moment to wander back in, freshly changed and with eyes only for the coffeepot.  
  
"And _you_." Heiji just misses Campari's pajama sleeve.  "What d' you have t' say for yourself?"  
  
"Mm?"  Campari barely glances up from where he's scooping grounds into the machine, but it's enough that Heiji's mind stutters to a stop.  Campari looks perfectly amicable and unruffled, perhaps a bit tired, dammit Heiji sucks at emotional shit but those are not the eyes of a man who's had the time of his life tonight.  "Say for myself, hm."  He considers that for a moment.  
  
Amari's buzz goes quiet like someone flattened a hand over a guitar's strings.  "... Aniki?"  
  
"We're switching beds tonight," Campari informs Heiji, and Amari wilts.  After a moment's silence, Campari nods, sets the machine to brew in the morning, and heads for Heiji's room with a quiet, "Good night."  
  
Silence falls over the kitchen.  Amari doesn't sound like he's even breathing, his head bowed and eyes invisible between Heiji's knees.  
  
Slowly, uncertainly, Heiji returns to washing the makeup off.  He's a little gentler about pulling the last two bits of latex free, wiping sticky spirit gum from Amari's still face with the makeup solvent, then he lets the washrag drop into the sink.  
  
What happened out there?  Campari's... what, exiling himself?  Or... no, _hiding_ himself.  What...?  
  
"I messed up, chibitantei," Amari murmurs into Heiji's lap.  
  
The admission rocks Heiji to the core.  _I messed up_.  
  
He knows enough about them -- about the way they were raised, 'designed for covert assassinations' like they were little homicidal robots -- that he seriously doubts either of them has ever actually, willingly, said that sentence before.  They sure as hell wouldn't have gotten anything less than horrific consequences if they had.  
  
"It's okay?" Heiji tries.  What did Amari _do_?  
  
Amari curls his arms around Heiji's ankles, a strange little calf-hug pinning Heiji's slippered feet to his chest, then glances over his shoulder at Heiji's room, where Campari -- if he holds perfectly still, breathes as quietly as possible, and keeps both ears uncovered by the pillow -- will be able to hear them at this hour.  
  
"Not here," he mutters, scooping Heiji up over his shoulder.  His usual studied carelessness is subdued as he deftly, 'incidentally' avoids knocking Heiji's head against the ceiling, cabinets, or doorjambs, and plops him down almost silently on the twins' large bed in a puddle of tangled bedding and orange streetlight.  Then he crawls in over Heiji, headbutting him flat and pinning him down, curling up on his legs and stomach.  
  
Heiji gingerly slides his fingers into Amari's hair, careful not to get snared in the tangled locks.  Making Amari feel trapped now, even the tiniest bit... no, Heiji would like to get through this unscathed, thanks.  "You both made it out okay," he says slowly, stroking with just his fingertips.  "No intel blown that you didn't want them to think already.  No evidence left behind, no accidental injuries or deaths... so I'm not seeing the problem?"  
  
Except that Campari has shut them out.  
  
Amari refuses to answer.  Whatever's going on in his head, the pressure's vented away.  He doesn't respond to Heiji's ginger petting, and eventually falls asleep, one hand twitching rhythmically on Heiji's chest.  
  
He's shooting things in his sleep.  
  
Heiji doesn't think he'll get to sleep at all after that.  But between one burning blink and the next, dawn sets faint sunlight slipping through the window blinds.  He can hear the coffeemaker burbling, and the scent of cooking rice is starting to waft into the room.  
  
After some effort, Heiji manages to slither free from under Amari's arm, sliding out of the twisted bedclothes with a thump that he knows woke the thief.  Amari doesn't bother to open his eyes, much less move, as Heiji pulls on a thick robe and house slippers and goes padding into the kitchen again, following the smells of breakfast.  
  
Campari sets a mug down on the counter and begins to pour a second as Heiji enters the kitchen.  
  
"I'm less tactile than Amari," he says flatly, without preamble, "always have been.  He interprets it badly when I take a night for myself.  He prefers to sleep with a loaded weapon than an empty bed when he's like that," which explains why the pillow had been so firmly lumpy, "The riskier the better."  
  
"But he kept the safety on," Heiji says inanely, still half-asleep.  
  
Campari huffs, a sharp little breath like a snicker, mirth flickering through his eyes.  "Wrong weapon."  _Huh?_   "What did he tell you last night?"  
  
"As much as he wanted, I guess."  Heiji is so not about to start playing that game.  Let them keep some things private of their own accord for a change, it might do them some good to be less codependent.  
  
"I see."  Campari plates up omelets and salad, rice and soup, cups of yogurt, all in small dishes on trays he then sets out at the table.  Heiji's napkin is folded around a flash drive that looks like an omamori.  "Rounyo Benten shrine on the hill in Senno-ji.  Fat man, yellow phone, behind the English sign."  
  
Heiji frowns, but takes it.  It's really too thick to be an omamori, but it's flat enough that no one will notice.  Not that they'll notice him anyway, kids being invisible and all.  Otherwise there's nothing remarkable about it, blue and white plastic textured to look like fabric, in the familiar tea bag shape.  The kanji read _kanai-anzen_.  Peace and prosperity in the household.  Ha.  "What's on it?" he asks dubiously.  
  
For the first time, Campari actually answers him.  "Just a bit of years-end cleaning.  Summer's big blowout left the place nice and open for us to start seeing the ground-in dirt."  He gives Heiji a faint, vicious little smile, and explains, "Corporate financial records.  Someone's been redirecting what used to go to Grandfather to his own accounts."    
  
"And this," Heiji wiggles the drive, "is going to...?"  
  
"Best you not know that."  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
By the 27th, Saguru has winnowed out some eight lines of investigation to follow, plus the wrapup on the Christmas Heist that he's not thinking about.  The six brooches from the heist are also topics he's not thinking about... not because they're too interlinked with said event (though they are), but because he strongly suspects they're pieces to riddles Kid Homage has yet to deliver.  He's put a call out for the earliest delivered line of investigation, that of the grandfather murdered with a faceful of tapestry needles: surely that's unique enough that only a singular instance of it will have occurred, and that case officer will contact Tokyo once the request has reached that far.  
  
Which leaves the knife.  
  
Fortunately for Saguru's nerves, this isn't the one Heiji had kept at his throat.  Unfortunately, though, it's the one they watched Kid use, the only one Saguru actually saw.  He swallows, sips at his cooling tea, swallows again, and pushes everything but deduction away.  
  
The knife is an antique piece most likely of rural American origin.  It's a clip-point blade, one of the many varieties that can be described as a Bowie knife, with metal of indifferent manufacture and nonstandard size.  As in, the damned thing is massive, far longer than any reasonable mass-manufacturer of the period would make a knife.  Judging from how the clip-point's been made, roughly blunting some two-thirds of the back edge without thickening the flat of the blade for strength, it most likely was homemade from a broken military sword.  In addition, the handle bears the telltale snakeskin appearance of a soot-rubbed corncob, which is hardly the material of choice among the wealthy or well-off, nor those with urban access to goods.  The use of old swords and cheap handles was quite common in the mid-to-late 19th century, during which the existence of the Bowie had overlapped with the last several decades of standard issue of a sword to lower military echelons, coupled with an abundance of small wars to choose from.  However, only a weapons historian and a metallurgic analysis will provide any further particulars about the blade's provenance.  
  
It's not at all an easy sort of knife to obtain or carry, these days; it would be infinitely simpler to buy a modern, mass-produced switchblade, something that can be folded up and hidden in a pocket.  Therefore, Kid chose this particular blade, for some particular reason, and left it behind as some particular message.  
  
Homemade (self-made?), corncob and soot (garbage and dirt?  trash into beauty or usefulness?), broken weapon (obvs.), impoverished America (hypocrisy?): Americans may tout their grand ideals of freedom and democracy, even the most cursory glance at their actual history and even their current events tells a far different story, and the 19th century saw a great deal of the worst of it.  
  
Or there could possibly be an exhibit of American folk art up somewhere.  That would be worth looking into, though there'd be no gems or pieces of high monetary value...  He needs more data.  
  
Saguru gets out his calipers and begins taking measurements.  
  
Some ten minutes and twenty-three seconds later, Saguru's finished taking measurements of the knife.  The blade entire is a ridiculous 30.11 cm long, akin to someone sharpening a school ruler and adding a handle, but the blunt edge is precisely 21.41 cm.  That cannot be coincidence, so he's about to begin cross-referencing the remaining numerical values to previous Kid Homage cases when Doi-keiji knocks on the wall near Saguru's desk.  
  
Saguru glances up and blinks.  Doi isn't alone.  The woman at his shoulder is a bespectacled blonde -- a European wheat color, not Saguru's or Dr. Miyano's oolong-tea shade -- in her late twenties, wearing a fleece-lined tan trenchcoat over a burgundy knit dress.  (The make of both are cheap, easy to move in and even more easily disposable.  Budget tourist wear, if he takes the most innocuous deduction possible.)  
  
(If he's more paranoid about it, burgundy hides bloodstains fairly well, though not as much so as a good dark brown.  Tan, however, does not.)  
  
The woman holds out her hand and beams.  "Hi!" she says, in a painfully brassy American accent.  "I'm Jodie Saintemillion.  You guys can call me Jodie-san, though, I know my name's weird and it would be rude to make you call me something more formal than everybody else just because you can say it."  
  
 _Americans_.  "... Jodie-san," Saguru echoes.  He doesn't take her proffered hand.  "I beg your pardon, but..." He glances quickly at Doi-keiji.  "May we help you?"  
  
Her attitude falters almost imperceptibly as Doi winces.  "Didn't you get the memo, Hakuba-kun?" he asks.  Saguru glances pointedly at the stack of paperwork he's shoved aside, most of which is currently bureaucratic jargon for 'I'm not going to sue for Kid's actions', 'I'm going to counselling for Kid's actions', and 'yes I'm sure this is what Kid did'.  In triplicate.  "We're being, ah, sourced for research for a documentary.  On the original Kid," Doi adds hastily.  "Though Homage will probably feature in a short segment on copycats, I think?"  
  
Jodie's smile goes slightly plastic.  "We'll see, we'll see.  Anyway.  Yes.  I do research for documentaries, Jack the Ripper and Sherlock Holmes and forensics and all that sort of stuff.  American intellectuals love it!"  Saguru tries not to label that an oxymoron, as she continues, "I'm the only one on the team who knows Japanese, so," she makes a little uplifting gesture with her hands, "here I am!  And I'm honored for the opportunity!"  
  
"... Of course."  Saguru rallies magnificently, inasmuch as he can considering the circumstances, and offers his hand, palm-up.  "If I may offer a crucial piece of information for your research upon the Kaitou Kid phenomenon?"  
  
Her eyes go bright and eager, and she leans in.  "Yeeees?"  
  
"Rule One.  Never assume someone is going undisguised."  And he pinches her face.  
  
"YEEEEEOW!"  
  
Having successfully chased the woman off, Saguru returns to his work.  
  
The electronic file on Kid Homage's probable Grandfather arrives that afternoon on the heels of a phone call from the case officer: a John Doe (or, rather, 'Yamada Tarou'), age 55-65, killed via an unnervingly clean scattershot blast of sharpened tapestry needles through his face.  The only gore, other than a few trickles of blood from the wounds and his rather badly damaged sinus cavity, was fluid from the complete deflation of his eyes.  There had, in addition, been GSR all over his hands and three illegal (loaded, undocumented, _and_ not stored in a safe) gun caches in the room with him.  There had not been fingerprints, including on the body's fingertips.  
  
By the time Saguru finishes reading that file, a second phone call and scanned file arrives.  This Yamada Tarou, in Nara, was a man in his mid-thirties found shot (once in the throat by a small-caliber gun, and four times through the head with a traditional bow and arrows) in an archery dojo in full practice gear.  His hands also had the missing fingerprints and anomalous GSR, in this case caked in the under-nail scrapings with giriko resin (concentrated on the right forefinger and thumb) and fudeko powder (on the left hand entire), both of which were standard to the sport.   
  
The case occurred some nine days after the elder's, and the two are, according to genetic analysis, father and son.  (Or nephew and identical twin uncle, however until the implied direct relative can be located or eliminated as a possibility, that is merely a footnote to keep in mind.)  
  
"Whatcha readin?"  The woman has rallied in true American fashion.  
  
Saguru minimizes the window at her lazily enunciated English.  "Miss Saintemillion--"  
  
"Jodie-san!" she corrects cheerfully.  
  
"-- It may come as a surprise, but not all the files upon my desk are of use to you in your 'research'.  Do desist from attempting to read over my shoulder."  
  
She makes a face, but steps back with an air of being terribly mistreated.  "I'm hardly going to know if a file's what I need if I'm not allowed to look at any of them," she complains.  "I've got clearance for open cases, you know!  The entire Kid Homage thing is a bunch of open cases!"  
  
There's no arguing with her, is there.  Saguru grits his teeth and shuts the entirety of his Word program and internet browser down, ignoring her unspoken whine.  "Miss Saintemillion--"  She mutters a grumpy ' _Jodie-san_ '.  "-- Did you want something other than to indulge your curiosity when you approached me?"  
  
She blinks.  "Oh.  Yes."  Her sunny smile pops back up like it had never vanished in the first place.  "Of course I did.  Interview questions!"  Out comes a hand-held voice recorder, which she plunks on the desk between them.  "Mind if I record this?  Thanks!"  She hits the button before Saguru can object.  "Don't worry, this is just so I can transcribe later, we'll contact you if we need film.  So!  Kid Homage isn't the first Kid 1412 copycat, right?  What sets him apart from the rest?"  
  
"Well, for one..." Resigned, Saguru begins on automatic, sliding into the artifical calm of the witness stand.  "He's making no pretense of actually being Kid 1412."  He folds his hands together on the desk between them, and meets Jodie-san's eyes directly in a way he never would for a Japanese interrogator.  "The copycats, as you so eloquently put it, sometimes did a great deal of nonsense attempting to seem authentic.  The usual MO, though, was to send a notice of dubious provenance to the media, plant a couple of party tricks around the house, and begin screeching upon 'discovery' of whatever crime they were attempting to frame the man for."  
  
Usually the notices were enough to mark a copycat.  Improper formatting was common, as were poor facsimiles of the signature caricature, but in many cases they tried too hard to make the writer seem like a non-fluent speaker of the locale's common language, while in several others they didn't realize Kid 1412 shouldn't write like a native.  
  
"A few more enterprising culprits hid scraps of white fabric -- which never matched the unique properties of Kid's cape -- in the landscaping."  Saguru lets himself quirk a scoffing little smile.  "One notable occasion saw the 'victim' using a concealed video projector and recorded news footage to show Kid flitting about the property.  Given the quality of video projection technology even today, it was fairly easy to spot, I'm told."  
  
Jodie nods.  "But Kid Homage doesn't do that."  
  
"He doesn't even dress in white."  Dove gray with charcoal accents, the monocle worn sinister instead of dexter.  The only white about him is the tie.  And the teeth in that unhinged smile.  Saguru stifles a shiver.  "That and the name are, of course, self-evident.  By physical criteria alone, there's as little difference between 1412, a particularly intrepid copycat, and Homage as there is in a set of Chinese knockoff toys.  The true difference is... hm."  How to put this?  "Psychological.  Motive, methodology, ability."  
  
The woman's gaze is rapt and piercing, and Saguru needs to look away.  He lifts his hands to his mouth, feeling the faintest tremble vibrate where his knuckle brushes his chin.  "He's not attempting to cover up another, singular crime, such as insurance fraud or murder.  He's not planting evidence that another culprit was present; he's truly wearing the costume and putting himself on display, pitting himself against the police and the vagaries of chance and circumstance, and committing the thefts.  And, most notably... the man thinks like Kid."  
  
A Kid without the exquisite, distant manners of 1412, or indeed any ingrained mores at all that Saguru can delineate.  How much of the Task Force's continued good health can be contributed to Homage imitating the original's nonviolent credo, rather than actually being unwilling to do injury?  But still, he thinks like Kid.  Which is perhaps the most terrifying factor of all, given 1412 has never been caught.  
  
After a long pause, Jodie prompts, "And how is that?"  
  
Saguru's laptop chimes.  Despite the inactive connection and password locks, a new window pops up.  At the odd emoticon, Saguru's stomach clenches cold in his gut.  
  
Well, then.  
  
"I believe you're about to have the opportunity to observe for yourself."  And he turns the laptop to face her.  
  
 _They carried her war-tailors to that last of five, in that hour when she met that first of five.  No favors from her crown; see that bright sickle raised high with executions.   ^_O_  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
Despite -- or perhaps because of -- the arrival of the notice, Saguru's forced to take the weekend off, and then he only gets Monday before he's required to take the rest of the week as well.  He's feeling quite ambivalent about the New Year's holiday and his own minority when, early Monday morning, some subconscious line of inquiry floods into another and he cracks half the note.  
  
 _Executions_ is a traditional Chinese constellation, one of the twenty-eight mansions of non-circumpolar stars, and the mansion which will be in proximity to the crescent moon late in the week.  Using Chinese lore as the note's theme... five is elements, short-lived dynasties (concurrent with ten kingdoms) between the Tang and Song, legendary emperors...  
  
Hm.  There's no consensus on who the Five Emperors (or the Three Sovereigns before them) were, but those most commonly listed are the Yellow Emperor and Emperor Yao (4 of 5 sources).  They're followed by Zhuanxu, Ku, Shun, and Shaohao (3 of 5), and then Yan and Taihao are unique to the same two lists.  
  
That's not going to narrow anything down.  However, the last of the Emperors, prior to the first and no-longer-mythical Xia Dynasty, is widely agreed to have been Shun.  Notable points of his reign: the establishment of standardized criminal penalties, a calendar, uniform measurements (a feat far too few people understand the brilliance of), and a visit from the deity Xi Wangmu.  
  
Whose messengers are bluebirds.  
  
Such as the glass bluebird pin from the Christmas Heist.  
  
He _knew_ the pins were going to be critical to future notes.  
  
Xi Wangmu, the Queen Mother of the West, is a goddess of life, keeper of the peaches of immortality (often found on her crown), and a scholar and divine teacher of five Chinese emperors: Shun, last of the five mythical emperors, and four historical emperors after him.  When she visited the court of Shun, she was recorded as bringing white jade rings, and either 'archers' thimbles of gem' or ceremonial wine vessels called jue.  
  
Archers, thimbles, tailors.  War-tailors.  
  
So that's that.  Saguru sets a program searching for ancient Chinese exhibits in Japan, and turns to timing.  When is the hour when Xi Wangmu met Emperor Shun?  The visit was attested to be the 9th year of his reign, but there's no consensus on when that reign actually was.  There's some 216 years' difference between calculations of the beginning of the Xia, another ten years' between reports of Shun's age when he passed away and thus relinquished the crown, and 23 years' difference in his coronation.  Trying to calculate the 9th year on current data is an exercise in futility.  
  
Oracle bone inscriptions?  They're some 1300 years later, in another dynasty, but transposing the dates of the Shang gives an afternoon period of 11:22 am to 6:06 pm.  (Or 17:66).  (Or, more likely considering it's BC, a non-afternoon period of 6:06 pm to 11:22 am, again too broad a window to be useful.)  The catalog number for the oracle bone containing Xi Wangmu's earliest mention can't be distilled to a date or time.  
  
Returning to the research, Saguru settles his hackles and reads ahead.  Five students.  Emperors Shun, Yu, Mu, Qin Shi Huangdi, and Wu, who she had a romantic relationship with.  ... _when she visited him during the night of Double Seven, the night for encounters between mortal men and divine women_...  
  
Double seven must mean Tanabata.  That's _July_ , what is Kid playing at?  
  
... What's the 77th hour of the year?  
  
"5 am, January 4th."  And the target is... a jade ring from Neolithic China, on display at, "The Tokyo National Museum."  
  
"Oh, bravo!" Jodie-san says, and Saguru very nearly levitates out of his chair.  
  
"Jesus don't _do_ that!"  
  
Jodie smiles behind her phone, giving it a little wave.  "Smile, you're on candid camera!"  
  
Saguru tries to grab the phone and misses.  "Miss Saintemillion," he raises his voice over her chirpy protest, "I am a minor and my father has enemies.  _Delete that immediately_."  
  
"Awwwwww."  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
The target is an archer's thumb ring, angled at one end and marked with worn abstract designs, made of a cheerful pinkish jade rather than the namesake green or once-prized white.  It's too small to fit on Saguru's thumb (that much is readily apparent to the naked eye), and all they can do for it is run a velvet-wrapped chain through it into the display base and hope for the best.  
  
The museum, however.  The museum is a cesspool of glass atriums and artfully dim lighting, colorless larger-than-life statues out in the open, can lights like stars in sound-baffle carpeted ceilings, and Saguru can just _see_ where someone is going to bleed all over the architecture.  There's a textured concrete column in particular that he would very much like to wrap in gym mats, though that wouldn't do much for neck fractures should someone get thrown against it wrong.  
  
He watches a day care group eagerly watching the police setting up and mostly ignoring the beleagured guides trying to herd them towards the exit at the end of their tour.  The group is evenly divided between kindergarteners and older pre-teens due to the holiday break; no doubt they're mostly children like Saguru himself, with single parents in careers that require holiday shifts, like airlines and hospitality, medical and law enforcement.  
  
Several of the children have little brightly-colored phones, and are taking pictures of the police: along with the usual squadrons shining flashlights into the ceiling and ventilation and studying blueprints, there's a team drilling into the marble floors under the curator's hand-wringing, another hammering steel rods-and-rings into the holes, and the last is wrapping up the free-standing statues in the atrium with heavy-duty transport padding and chaining them down.  Eventually, though, the guides and chaperones manage to usher the day care out with a faint hungry cry of ' _unagi_ ~' drifting in their wake.  
  
The heavy museum doors fall shut with a thump that reverberates through the atrium and Saguru alike.  The thump's followed by the adjuncts throwing the deadbolts, too quietly to hear, then the key locks, then security threading the thickest chains that can fit through the handles and take a padlock.  It's mostly for show, due to fire regulations, however each clicking bolt sets the first shift sentries' shoulders imperceptibly lower and more relaxed.  
  
Have they learned nothing from experience?  This is merely locking them in with the minotaur.  Saguru's hand tightens around the taser in his coat pocket.    
  
Eleven hours.  
  
Mark.  
  
"This is hardly how anybody wanted to spend a Friday night, huh, Hakuba-kun?"  
  
Saguru flinches.  " _Why_ must you hover so, Miss Saintemillion?"  And why oh why must she be here instead of safely at the station, or at home, ready to come in and watch the heist on security video like a sensible civilian.  
  
Oh.  Right.  American.  
  
Jodie beams winningly, once again failing to charm Saguru.  "It's my job.  _Look_ at you.  Young, handsome, rich, British, and a prodigy to boot.  You're going to make or break the documentary, I just know it."  
  
God forbid.  "Best forget that now, Miss Saintemillion.  Neither I nor my parents have any intention of agreeing to let me provide interviews."  He takes note of her muttered 'nine months to convince you', because she shouldn't know his birthday so easily.  (At least she's assuming all countries set the age of majority at eighteen as the USA does, because if she knew he was already legal in the UK she'd probably not be put off by the fact that he _won't_ be in Japan til he's twenty.)  "It would be more appropriate for you to interview Nakamori-keibu anyway.  He _is_ the one who's handled the 1412 case, after all."  
  
She makes a sour little sound in her throat.  " _Everybody_ interviews Nakamori-keibu.  Come on, I'll buy you dinner."  
  
 _With exactly how much rohypnol for flavor?_   "I've seen what the museum cafe has left.  I'll pass."  He lets the aggravation ghost over her face, then says, "Oh, and one last thing."  
  
"YEEOOW!"  
  
Saguru makes his escape while Jodie-san, who is not Kid but is definitely getting creepier by the day, sputters and fusses.  He finds a quiet corner high on the mezzanine, staff-only and accessible solely by the door to the administrative offices and a trapdoor into the ceiling, the latter of which being what the mezzanine is for.  The trapdoor is already locked, of course, but Saguru double-checks the bolt before eating his dinner.  Then it's one more round of checking locks and guards, getting his face pinched, watching a four-man squad clear the curator's office for him, and then Saguru goes to bed early on one of the many stretcher-cots the labs use for mummified remains.  
  
He sleeps poorly enough that he's fairly certain his bento was untampered with.  
  
3:51 am finds him returning to the small exhibit hall housing ancient Chinese works, and specifically the target, one of many assorted miscellanea in the long glass-topped table at the center of the room.  
  
Second shift is alert and well-bruised, and the cage preparations are not at all noticeable in the room's maximum lighting.  Said maximum is still unhelpfully dim, but there's no helping that; the bulbs and their distribution have been calculated to permit viewing without the capability to damage delicate pigments and fibers in other cases.  
  
Saguru reads the little placards in the wall displays, checking for discrepancies within the cases and around the glass framing.  He's going to be so disappointed if this morning's events ruin the museum for him.  The Toyokan has some exceptional pieces of historical craftsmanship, and this is the first he's visited the place... Though he would greatly appreciate it better if the museum's speaker system wasn't, ever-so-faintly, skittering with static.  
  
Wait a minute.  
  
The speaker system shouldn't be running at all, this time of night.  
  
Saguru frowns at the ceiling, calculates acoustics, and takes two steps to the right.  He tips his head, tilting his dominant (right) ear to the ceiling, closes his eyes, and...  
  
It's a distinctive beat, that odd drum-guitar-synthesizer sound of the eighties, and the song's almost inaudible and winding down fast.  - _questions right in my hand and then/answers gone til_ \--  
  
The guitar starts right back up immediately, the song starting over, and Saguru bites his lip, holding his breath.  This is Kid, this has to be Kid, but why...?  He's nearly an hour early.  
  
 _Danced with wind and danced with fire/Killed the truth and called the liar/Bleeding in its mystery when the moon began to fall.._.  
  
Nonsense, nonsense, ominous nonsense but _he's too early_.  
  
Saguru presses a hand to his face, tries to think.  If he warns anybody he'll lose the clue in all the noise.  But what is Kid waiting for?  
  
 _Called you right and called you wrong/Time the shadow sings your song..._  
  
... What if Kid means to mimic the manner in which the Chinese count age (or, indeed, how everybody counts centuries) and arrive in the hour _preceding_ 5 am, rather than anteceding?  
  
"He's here!" Saguru shouts, whipping around, and that's when the ceiling drops countless smoke bombs onto their heads.  Shouts go up, shock mixing with yelps as the aluminum balls hit -- Saguru hisses when one bounces off his temple, not loud enough to cover the popcan crunch of another hitting his shoulder -- and the room is suddenly all smoke and yelling once again.  
  
The cage goes off with a thunderous clang.  Saguru stumbles over the rolling bombs and catches himself on the steel bars, only to find Nakamori and several indistinct, officer-shaped figures trapped inside.  
  
Someone taps him on the head.  
  
There, on the top edge of the cage, Kid Homage is crouching with the ring in his fingers.  "Morning, Meitantei!"  Saguru lunges for him, but the bastard backflips merrily away, cape flaring and fanning billowing smoke into confusing eddies.  
  
Saguru knows where he's going.  The atrium is too dramatic for Kid to resist.  Though why the hell he's chasing his psychotic stalker instead of bidding him good riddance...  
  
Well.  He never could put in a token effort, now could he.  That's going to be the death of him, one of these days.  
  
The atrium is only sporadically dotted with the smoke, the music playing in some remix that cuts the chorus and is barely audible over the shouting, swirling morass of Task Force trying to climb over museum security, the former heedless of the latter's professional terror... for Kid is perched delicately on a statue's spearpoint halo, just out of arm's reach of the nearest glass-fronted landing, pouting down at the thick navy-blue quilts turning his perch from art to cargo.    
  
"Really, Meitantei?" he asks when Saguru all but knocks the wind out of himself on the polished rail.  He taps the point of his expensive dress shoe against the padding and makes a face.  "I feel so _dirty_ ," he whines.  
  
"My deepest sympathies," Saguru calls back sarcastically.  "Perhaps you'd prefer the elegant minimalism of a jail cell!"  
  
"I prefer a more Victorian asthetic."  Kid's pout flicks into a quickly-blown kiss before smoothing out once more.  "Though in a pinch I can make do with others.  Do you like the music?"  
  
It's a distraction tactic, he knows it, but Saguru can't help but hear the lyrics again for a couple of bars before tuning it back out.  
  
 _Hand that's strong and voice it's clear/An unforgotten memory when the moon begins to call._..  
  
"Doesn't quite fit," Saguru informs him.  
  
That gets him another, more mocking pout.  "There's so few songs called 'China' in English.  I could've picked the love song if you really _wanted_ , though."  
  
God no.  "I think not."  How long can he keep the thief in place?  He can, just in his peripheral vision, see that behind Kid Homage the Task Force has found more chain and seems to be making lassos.  He just needs another minute--  
  
A gunshot rings out.  
  
Kid jerks.  The monocle hits the floor with a tinkling crash.  
  
 _Don't lock it all inside and hide it all away._..  
  
Saguru just barely gets a glimpse of the thief's face under his gloved hand, bone-chilling homicidal _rage_ , before Kid Homage leaps for the mezzanine above like a wild animal.  Saguru would almost swear he sees froth in the corner of Kid's mouth -- white rabid froth, not foaming blood from a lung shot -- before the thief disappears into the depths of the ceiling.  
  
 _Killed the truth and called the liar/Bleeding in its mystery when the moon began to fall._..  
  
Saguru's running before he quite realizes where he's going.  But someone's shot at Kid Homage, someone up in the mezzanine which should be locked, _was_ locked, Saguru did it himself, and that someone is going to die if Kid Homage gets to them first.  
  
The back offices are eeriely silent.  Everyone is in the atrium, or the exhibit halls, or inside the storage and labs where delicate and priceless artifacts are kept and need protection far more than empty hallways do.  
  
He finds the mezzanine door, grabs the handle, and nearly breaks his wrist when it doesn't budge.  It's still locked.  Who has keys, other than himself?  Nakamori, the curator, the head of maintenance who wasn't here tonight... Saguru unlocks the door, flinging it open, and finds...  
  
Nothing.  The mezzanine is unoccupied.  Kid and the sniper are both gone.  
  
He steps warily onto the small platform.  Up above, the trapdoor is bolted from the underside, though it's only a latch lock instead of a keyed one or a padlock.  At his feet, though, there are three items: a black knit hat, unfolded as if ripped hastily from someone's head; a clear umbrella, folded loosely and with a visible hole near the end; and a note with his name on it.  
  
 _Sorry to cut our date short, will try to do better next time, xoxoxo, Kid Homage  @-}-_  
  
That's... worrying.  Kid should be escalating, but he'd not gotten within arm's reach yet this time, save for that initial tap to the crown of Saguru's head.  What had he been planning to do that would be so much worse than the Christmas Heist?  
  
The door thuds, and Saguru jumps, only to find a couple of officers out of breath and hovering in the doorway.  Not Kid, not unless the man is capable of stifling that feral homicidal madness far quicker than Saguru could expect.  
  
Though expectations have a way of evaporating around Kid.  
  
He pinches their faces in turn, and is relieved to find them both to be real officers of the law.  "Bag and tag, gentlemen, if you would?"  He steps out of the way, gesturing shakily to the untouched evidence, and the three of them sidle past each other in the narrow space.  Saguru pops free back into the corridor, and heads back downstairs, thinking.  
  
The clear umbrella's purpose is obvious.  The black cap, less so, as it's not a balaclava and therefore couldn't hide any of the sniper's features.  Either or both of them could be red herrings, though... the sniper could be hiding among the men here, with no gunshot residue to find, or he could be escaping ever further out of reach while they search among their own fruitlessly.  
  
Back on the atrium floor, the curator looks to be having conniptions over the smoke, some white-coated lackey taking samples as best she can in the quickly dissipating eddies.  Several other people are being treated for lacerations and contusions, no doubt obtained in the altercation over climbing the statues to get Kid Homage.  Forensics is crouched near the center of the atrium, and as Saguru watches a senior detective pries the bullet out of the padding around the concrete pillar.  It's not at all in the trajectory between the mezzanine and where Kid had been standing, however (Saguru does a quick calculation and glances at the spot the bullet should've hit) there's a notable directional chip in the marble, some 1.3 meters away from the thief's fallen monocle, and a little forensic marker in place next to it already.  
  
Saguru reaches the monocle just as they finish setting markers on the last shard of broken glass from it, and the cameras come out.  
  
The monocle is dented where the bullet presumably hit it, at the attachment point for the decorative chain, the delicate links of which are trapped somewhere in the crumpled metal.  Its charm, rather than being so much broken glass now, is a red spade on metal, most likely anodized titanium.  And... is that...?  Saguru pulls out his magnifying glass and, careful not to block the camera's field or flash, peers at the distinctly non-standard gallery of the piece.  He's noticed before, how the thief's monocle has a protrusion for the bridge of the nose, but he's never considered how the mechanism quite works.  Traditional monocles fit in the eye socket by pure pressure, whether using the lens' edge in cheaper versions or a metal gallery to hold the lens out where blinked eyelashes won't dislodge it, but either way they only stay in place by fitting into the bony orbit.  
  
It seems, however, that the thief uses an adhesive to help keep the monocle secure despite his acrobatics, because upon the interior of the bridge and the nasal side of the gallery, there is a strip of pale tissue far too thin to be latex... and there, in pointillated red streaks at the center of the widest section, is blood.  
  
"Gentlemen," and Saguru cannot help it; he smirks toothily, "we have DNA."  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
Amari is terrifyingly silent as Campari dabs antiseptic over his torn skin.  His grin remains in place, wide and cutting and utterly empty, even as his left eye glistens with unshed tears -- reacting to the fumes, Heiji thinks, more than from any depth of emotion.  
  
"I suppose we should've simply shot that Snake person and been done with it," Campari muses.  
  
"Rye."  
  
"Let's not go jumping to conclusions, hm?  I'd rather not have the Americans hounding us."  Campari fusses over the dust bunnies clinging to Amari's cape, stepping over to the balcony to shake it out and drape it with their decoy gray sheets.  "So messy."  
  
Heiji knows he's not talking about the dust, but rather the bodies that would pile up in the twins' wake if the alphabet soup came after them.  
  
"Should've killed him anyway.  Clean sweep."  
  
"No, Amari."  
  
"But he's ruined the game _twice_ already."  
  
Campari flicks him in the forehead.  "You love challenges.  Account for snipers and carry on."  Amari opens his mouth, and Campari flicks him again.  "If you tell me I sound like any of our trainers, I will hurt you."  
  
"... Okey-dokey, baachan."  
  
"Except her."  
  
Amari grins, life returning to his face.  "Why do you think I called you that?"  He hops off the countertop.  "So what's the plan for the day?"  
  
"Sleep today," Campari answers pleasantly, "Kick ourselves back onto a normal schedule tomorrow, and call Heiji in sick on Monday and Tuesday."  
  
Heiji blinks.  "Wait, what?"  
  
"You heard me."  And Campari takes Amari off to bed.  
  
Without having lost an entire night to the heist, Heiji stays awake.  He watches a little tv, then takes Campari's wallet and buys groceries, and the low temperature fails to save him from being dragged to the playground when the kids catch him on the way out of the store.  
  
The groceries are untouched, frozen noodles still frozen, when Heiji finally manages to beg off by pointing out that Ayumi-chan's starting to turn blue.  
  
He makes udon as sounds of life start to drift from the twins' bedroom, and is putting it on the table when Amari wanders out in nothing but pajama pants, his hair more wild than usual and scratching at his stomach.  "Mm.  Good housewife."  
  
"Cyanide in yours if you ever call me that again," Heiji replies.  
  
"Not as flavorful as strychnine."  Amari grins.  Then he tosses a red leather case, about the size of an envelope and twice as thick, onto the table between them.  Heiji doesn't want to know where he was hiding it.  "Happy New Year's, have late lucky gift."  
  
"It's supposed to be cash," Heiji points out, as he opens the case.  Inside are six plastic sticks that resemble flash drives, though only one of them has the standard USB attachment.  "What's this?"  
  
"Secret tech stuff," Campari answers as he enters the room.  He's wearing actual clothes, unlike Amari, but he hasn't yet bothered to comb his hair.  "Custom-made by yours truly."  His gesture includes Amari, before he sits down, takes up his chopsticks, and taps the case with the thick end of one.  "Stick one into any computer, and it'll copy the hard drive over.  No muss, no fuss, and if you're careful, no fingerprints."  
  
Heiji doesn't want to ask.  He already knows he's not going to like the answer.  But, "What am I supposed to do with this?" he grumbles.  
  
Two days later, he has his answer.  Tucked into the bottom of a laundry cart, Heiji holds a fresh-scented dryer sheet over his nose and silently cringes away from the old bedding being dumped on top of the sack holding him with each new room.  Hotel guests are beyond gross, what the hell makes them think that it's okay to do... whatever the hell they do that makes the sheets smell like this... just because they won't have to live in it more than a couple of nights?  
  
Outside the bin, someone knocks on another door.  "Maid service," Amari calls out in a bored, older woman's voice.  Then comes the _click-clunk_ of someone using a keycard, and Heiji's cart rumbles over the threshold and into a hotel room that smells of beer and cheap perfume.  The weight on top of him pulls away, and someone lifts his bag out of the bottom of the bin.  
  
The drawstring top gets unlaced and pulled down around his head, and Heiji blinks at the sight of a bland hotel room in disarray, but more importantly at the two maids in shapeless gray dresses and aprons.  The older, dumpier one has the granny hump and gorilla arms of a seasoned baker, while the younger one is bloated and starting to show a pregnancy.  
  
Also the younger one has Amari's grin as she playfully tightens the drawstring around Heiji's throat for a moment before tugging the bag down to his ankles.  
  
"Looks like he has an iPad," Campari tells him, tossing him a small pair of latex gloves.  "New generation.  #3 should work on it."  
  
Heiji clutches the hacker case close and swallows, but nods.  As the twins begin straightening the room and changing linens, he puts on the gloves and gingerly opens the iPad's case.  
  
A real crime.  He's really... not just taking pictures of public property, or picking up mail that turns out to be nothing criminal at all, or dropping evidence with no hope that the contact is law enforcement or government... he's committing this himself.  The #3 port fits into the iPad's only slot, and begins rhythmically flicking the paired working lights on its top.  
  
The... the target... he has to be doing something wrong, though.  Hopefully.  Profiting off the systems the twins' ancestors had in place.  
  
He has to know what the guy's done.  
  
As the flash drive continues to work, Heiji examines the app icons, and pokes at one that looks like it might be useful.  Forensics loves spreadsheets, so that's got to be helpful.  
  
... Yeah, if you're an accountant.  Or have the codebook.  He sort of knows what a residual is, but what the hell is "OMRK BAb" in the column before so many obvious weapons make-and-model codes?  How is it different from "OMRK HT", and what are the letters and numbers that follow it, since they don't match any weapons Heiji knows?  
  
Campari taps a knuckle on Heiji's head, and Heiji looks up, frowning at 'her' latex face.  "We'll see you when you get back."  A pause.  "... And be careful to leave as soon as the drive's finished.  He's in meetings til three, but this guy's not the type to get police involved if it's inconvenient."  
  
Heiji grits his teeth, but nods, and waves back as the twins leave.  
  
The door automatically locks behind them.  
  
Heiji turns back to the tablet.  The spreadsheets aren't obvious, though he's pretty sure the BAb one is weapons trafficking.  The first column all starts with four-letter series, but it's not for phone numbers or area codes... unless you're using the ICAO system for airports.  O is for the Middle East somewhere.  So that's a whole lot of weapons trafficking through the Middle East, and of course that's going to be lucrative.  Residuals is leftovers, so... leftover weapons from BAb in the Middle East...?  
  
What's HT then?  Not weapons, but the next-to-last column is American dollars and the last is yen, and they're both extremely high amounts.  So HT is something else extremely lucrative and illegal, and physical so that it has to go through airports at least, rather than the internet or mail.  
  
Uncut gems?  But those could go in someone's pocket on commercial air, not cargo, and there's a column for transport that can't be airline tickets at those prices.  
  
Okay.  Try a different tack.  Number one category of revenue in the black market is counterfeit medicines.  Number two is...  
  
Oh.  
  
HT is human trafficking.  
  
The flash drive's lights stop blinking.  It's finished.  Heiji takes it out of the port, turns off the tablet and closes its case, then puts the drive in a pocket and straightens the wrinkles out of the chair where he'd been sitting.  
  
When he leaves, it looks like no one's been there at all, except for the maids.  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
DNA comes back on the 13th, and the file is startlingly thick.  There's the expected match to the Nara and Yokohama cases -- the father, now confirmed, and paternal grandfather -- but there's also earlier cases.  Well over a dozen earlier homicides, in fact, already matched up to each other by this one test.  
  
In almost every earlier case, the DNA was found in the bedding.  An unknown male, the fresh linens of a hotel or a wealthy man's housekeeping service proving his presence had to occur upon that day or -- in the latter circumstances -- within the past three or four, depending on the particulars of the case.  The unknown male is, in every case, either the last unidentified suspect or has been the cause of dropped charges; the state couldn't make enough of a case to prosecute.  Implied is a thread of scorn for presumed prostitutes.  
  
Saguru pauses.  Checks the dates.  And his stomach turns over.  
  
Every single case is more than ten years old.  Kid's not yet twenty-three.  
  
Doi-keiji knocks on the wall.  "Hakuba-kun?  There's someone downstairs for you."  
  
Anything to get his mind off of... good lord no wonder Kid killed his relatives... "Thank you, I've got it," he says, before fleeing the files for the elevator.  
  
His eyes are drawn to the woman in the lobby before he recognizes Dr. Miyano.  Resplendent in violet and gold furisode kimono, she stands out like -- to mix his aesthestic metaphors -- a Baroque sculpture in a stark New York flat.  
  
"Hakuba-san."  
  
"Miyano-hakase."  This is not exactly going to get his mind off of Kid.  He swallows and tries to put a welcoming expression on his face.  "To what do I owe the pleasure?"  
  
She studies him for a moment.  Then her chin lifts imperiously, setting the kanzashi in her hair swaying.  "Come," she says.  "Buy me a drink."  
  
Saguru offers his arm more from ingrained manners than a wish to go anywhere with her, and she slips one thin hand into the crook of his elbow.  With the thick zori and her hair pulled high as best it can be, she's scarcely half a head shorter than him, and far stronger than she seems as she tugs him along in her wake.  
  
The bar is only open so early because of its proximity to the police station -- third shift appreciates a drink after work as much as first does -- but the holiday means it's doing a slightly more brisk business than usual, wait staff loaded down with trays of first-legal-drinks for nearly a dozen red-faced twenty-year-olds, the men in suits (formal black, rather than Saguru's salaryman blue) and the women in jewel-bright kimono.  They all look well on their way to being legally drunk.  
  
A waitress settles them in a booth near the back, takes their orders -- Saguru, of course, has tea, but he has no idea why Dr. Miyano seems to be enjoying some quiet joke when she orders sherry -- and then brings them hot washcloths and a bowl of edamame and leaves them to themselves.  
  
It occurs to Saguru, as she sets her fur stole aside and sets her napkin in her lap, that Dr. Miyano was raised by the same people as Kid.  "So."  Surely she won't want to discuss that.  "What brings you by?"  
  
"Orders, always orders," she replies, before politely brushing the matter aside.  "But work will keep.  How have you been?"  
  
"I could be better, but it's going fairly well."  Their drinks arrive, and Saguru makes small talk with Dr. Miyano as they work through the edamame.  A second round of drinks puts a faint flush into Dr. Miyano's cheeks, though she otherwise seems exactly as composed and graceful as she was perfectly sober.  
  
"You're about to have a bit of a problem with the Americans," she says, once the last bean is gone.  They've reached the serious business part of the conversation, and frankly Saguru is relieved.  He was running out of comments on the weather and her kimono selection.  She sips at her second sherry, and continues, "Your sniper?  Either FBI's set an assassin to warn off Kid, or someone's setting up FBI to take the fall for it."  She pauses.  "Or FBI's pretending that someone's setting them up to take the fall, so they can operate with plausible deniability, but that's starting to overthink it, I suppose."  
  
FBI?  "They don't have jurisdiction," is all Saguru can think to say.  International affairs are supposed to be CIA, not that any of the countries they operate in would necessarily agree...  
  
Dr. Miyano huffs something amused over the rim of her glass.  "The marksman who likes that sort of hat is FBI.  He's also on a very, very short list of people Kid would like a reason to kill."  She pauses.  "Kid may just do it if he decides getting shot at is more of a bother than pissing off the Americans... even if that man's being framed."  
  
Bloody hell.  He can hear the implied question, and it's going to cost him a great deal of professional capital if this ever gets out.  "... What do you need to know, Miyano-hakase?"  
  
"How clean the hat was."  
  
... Does the cleanliness of the hat mean that it does belong to the FBI agent Kid wants dead, as evidence of his professional skill, or that it does _not_ as it lacks evidence of having ever been used at all?  But there's really only one answer to give that will match police files, should Kid break in to check, so.  "It was pristine."  
  
She smiles politely.  "Thank you, Hakuba-san.  You may have just saved that agent's life."  She sets her empty glass down with a slightly inebriated clink.  "I'm authorized to answer one question for you, then."  
  
With a limited range of topics, he'd bet.  "I have two," he tells her slowly.  She raises an eyebrow, but nods a 'go on'.  "Is Heiji doing well?"  
  
That gets a blink.  "... I'll let you have that one for free, since I've not seen him since August," she replies.  "But he hasn't been brought to me for treatment, so he's been uninjured, at least."  
  
It's something.  Not much, but something.  Next question, then.  Saguru swallows, his gaze dropping to the wooden tabletop.  "This one.  I.  Don't necessarily expect you to answer.  But some evidence cross-referenced this morning, and."  He can't say it.  "You had the same... childhood... as Kid, yes?"  
  
Her eyes narrow, not sure what he's getting at.  "Somewhat, yes.  I've had most of the same weapons and loyalty training, if that's what you mean."  
  
 _Well the latter certainly didn't take_ , Saguru thinks.  "His DNA was in the bedding of a number of cold case homicide scenes," he says flatly.  
  
"... Oh."  She sounds completely taken aback.  "I... think I know the question."  A hapless glance at her drained wine, and she visibly settles into some cold mask.  "My weapons training was about self-defense and disposing of lab samples.  Sciences, not field work, you could say.  But, hypothetically speaking?  There are very few ways to get a child assassin alone with a wealthy stranger, so if the possibility was available... I wouldn't put it past them."  She pauses.  "They much preferred setting bombs and fires, so that wouldn't have been used nearly as often as it could've been."  
  
Even just once is too often.  "Thank you, Miyano-hakase."  
  
"Don't thank me.  I've left you more upset than before."  She slides out of the booth's bench seat, brushing the wrinkles out of her skirts, and bows.  "Thank you for the drink, Hakuba-san.  I hope the rest of the day goes better for you."  And she leaves, the grace in her walk perhaps a bit too careful for sobriety.  
  
The bill arrives a few moments later, and Saguru ends up in an argument over whether he's allowed to pay for alcohol, even though he didn't drink it.  
  



	8. Chapter 8

  
Friday brings a light sleet and high winds, and Heiji is damn grateful to duck into the convenience store on the way home.  
  
He's not nearly so grateful for the trio of half-frozen children who are making like bulldozers right now, all but shoving him up against the hot oden case by the cash register.  "Cold cold _cold_!" little Ayumi whines, curled in on herself and dripping all over Genta's coat.  Genta himself is shivering hard enough that he's making the dripping worse, shaking the girl like a wet dog.  
  
Okay, the metaphor's getting away from Heiji a bit.  It's nasty outside, is all Heiji's saying, and he'll probably have to invite the kids in for tea and rides home, despite the lunatic twins.  His place is closest to here, after all.  
  
As they slowly steam dry, the attendant finishes up with a customer -- short hair, wool raincoat, kitten heels showing a flash of reddened, frostnipped ankles under soaked trouser cuffs, fashion makes women such _idiots_ sometimes -- then turns to them.  "Can I help you?" she asks.  
  
Oh, why not.  "Lots of oden, please," Heiji says.  "Like, I dunno, six orders.  And I guess I should get cold medicine stuff, and we're gonna get puddings and drinks too."  Water drips from his bangs onto his nose.  "As soon as we're a little more dry."  
  
The attendant pauses.  "... Let me get you guys some towels."  
  
"Thank you!" the kids chorus pitifully, Heiji echoing them a little more quietly.  
  
She returns after a couple of minutes with a stack of thin handtowels, the traditional kind that people use as bandannas in the summer, but they've been stored next to a furnace or something and there's two for each of them, so they're wonderfully warm and do well enough.  Heiji uses only one to squeeze out his hair, tucks the other around his neck like a scarf, then takes a basket and steps over to the cooler case.  
  
Coffee panna cotta for Campari.  Chocolate for Amari.  Chestnut cake for Heiji.  Liter cartons of milk and milk tea, and a plastic one of CC Lemon -- that last one gets sort of chalky and gross after the second glass, but they're going to need all the Vitamin C they can get with this sort of weather -- and Heiji's arms are trembling with the basket's weight by the time he gets to the medicine aisles.  
  
He almost thinks he's dropped it when something hits the shelves in front of him with a crash that knocks half the wares to the floor.  Then he actually _does_ drop it at the attendant's scream.  
  
There's a man having a seizure in the next aisle.  Heiji yanks the man's basket out of the way, strips his coat off and shoves it under the man's head, and slaps a belt out of another customer's hand before he can shove it into the man's mouth.  
  
"Everybody get back!  Get BACK!" he snaps.  "You!  Call 119!  And--"  
  
There's a faint blue tinge to the man's lips.  Fuck.  Heiji tears the man's collar open, looks in his open mouth -- no swelling, no objects, nothing he can see -- there's nothing blocking the airway.  He doesn't smell like cocaine, doesn't have any telltales for high blood pressure or hypoglycemia, not that Heiji's a doctor but he knows what dying hard looks like and _this is it_.  
  
The idiot with the belt is in reach.  Heiji yanks him down.  "Tell me you know CPR."  
  
"I-- guess?"  
  
That's a 'no'.  Heiji closes the idiot's hands into a fist, puts them onto the seizing man's chest (this is one time he's pretty sure holding down a seizure victim's going to do more good than harm) and shoves in rhythm.  _One, two, three, four, Stayin' Alive, Stayin' Alive._   "Twice that hard.  Exactly that fast."  And he gets hold of the victim's twitching head -- no good, no good, he's weakening and going bluer by the second -- gets a hand under the man's neck and one pinching his nose, and begins rescue breathing.  
  
It's thirty seconds before Heiji's mouth goes numb.  He jerks away before he can think, grabs the towel around his neck and begins spitting into it.  The man doing chest compressions startles, all wide eyes on Heiji and _forgetting what he's doing fucking moron_.  "Keep going," Heiji snaps, the words falling mushy from numb lips.  
  
"Yamaguchi-kun?"  
  
Poison.  It has to be some sort of poison; it sure as heck feels like the start of anaphylactic shock but Heiji doesn't _have_ allergies.  
  
The CPR isn't going to work.  
  
"Yamaguchi-kun!" Ayumi pokes him in the shoulder, her gaze flicking from the dying man to Heiji.  "Why'd you stop?  Shouldn't someone--"  
  
"No."  Heiji flaps a hand roughly in her direction, edging her back further from the victim.  "There's poison or something, we-- DON'T BREATHE FOR HIM!" he yells at the attendant.  "He's been poisoned, my mouth's numb."  
  
While the attendant recoils in disbelief, the three kids look helplessly at each other.  Then, "I'm calling Yamaguchi-nii," Ayumi declares, and the two boys grab Heiji while Ayumi takes his phone out of his pocket.  
  
"Wait, don't--!"  
  
"Yamaguchi-niisan?" Ayumi says.  "It's Yoshida Ayumi, I'm in Hei-kun's class...?"  
  
Crap, crap, _crap_ , there's going to be EMTs and police everywhere, someone's going to trigger the twins' paranoia and someone's going to get _killed_ because Heiji couldn't leave this to the fucking grown-ups...  
  
He can't struggle too much.  The more he struggles, the faster his blood will circulate and the faster the mystery poison will spread.  He definitely won't be able to stop the twins if he's unconscious.  
  
Ayumi still has Heiji's phone when the EMTs arrive.  One pair shoo the man doing chest compressions away and break out their equipment; Heiji sees a defibrillator and one of those handheld oxygen masks before a second pair of EMTs block his view.  
  
"Hey, kid, we're here to help," the older one says, eyes crinkling in a smile that's too carefully assuring to actually work.  "What feels wrong?"  
  
Aside from the heart-racing panic that one of the twins is about to show up with cops on his ass and an itchy trigger finger?  "My mouth went numb when I tried to give that guy CPR," Heiji answers.  "I'm not allergic to anything, so I figured there was something weird in it?"  
  
The other EMT shines a light into his eyes.  "Sick to your stomach?  Feel hot or cold?"  Heiji shakes his head.  Hopefully they won't find enough to warrant a trip to the hospital, even as small as Heiji is compared to the victim (who, as Heiji cranes his head to see, is no longer being worked on by paramedics; he's got a handkerchief over his face, and his pair of medics are, respectively, corralling the customers in the back of the store and talking into a radio hand-held).  
  
How'd the guy get poisoned, though?  Nobody's dumb enough to keep eating or drinking when their mouth goes numb, much less go run errands instead of straight to a hospital.  Right?  But how else would it get into the mouth...?  
  
His eyes land on the shelf of cold medicines next to him.  Cough syrup, children's syrup, fizzy pills... throat spray.  Sore throat spray, promising throat soothing numbness.  There's one in a convenient pocket-sized flatpack.  
  
Well, shit.  
  
"Hey."  Heiji pokes the medic taking his pulse.  "Check his jacket for me, wouldja?"  
  
" _HEI-KUN!_ "  
  
Heiji jolts, knocking half the boxes off the lower shelf, then peers over his shoulder.  The twin at the end of the aisle looks frantic, windswept and breathing hard like he ran the entire way, and it's too well-acted for Heiji to be sure which twin it actually is, even when the man falls to his knees next to Heiji and catches him up in his arms.  "What _happened_?  Yoshida-chan couldn't tell me much, just that a man was hurt and you were poisoned?"  
  
"Um."  Did he really just blow things all out of proportion reacting to _throat spray_?  
  
The twin follows his gaze to the fallen medicines, then looks at the dead man.  "I see."  Heiji winces, but the twin's panic smooths out into Campari's familiar sobriety.  He stands, patting Heiji's shoulder to keep him in place, then steps past the paramedics to peer at the victim.  
  
Something deep in his expression goes very, very still.  He murmurs to the victim's medics, then -- with a glance at the store's windows, still lacking police and new sirens -- pulls out a clean handkerchief and turns out the man's pockets.  Wallet, handkerchief, phone, keys, the usual detritus... and a flatpack throat spray that's half-full.  
  
Heiji could've kept rescue breathing.  There's a man lying dead because... because...  
  
Campari's not stopping, though.  With the man's pockets turned out, he tips the lax head from side to side, peering at the back and sides of the neck, then tugs down his shirt collar.  "Ah."  He beckons the medics to lean in and get a good look.  "Entry wound," he announces calmly.  "Definitely not medical; no one administers injections to the neck outside of Star Trek.  My cousin may have been mistaken about the method of delivery, but he was quite right about the poison."  
  
Naturally, of course, that's when the police arrive.  It's the same team that was at the COCOON thing, the team they've had bugged ever since, though the twins don't check their feed nearly as often as the Hot Twink channel.  
  
Heiji goes quiet, Campari's hand resting heavily (warningly, comfortingly) on his head, watching the police take statements and evidence.  He manages not to react when Campari's fingers clench sharply in his hair at Ayumi's shaky description of the woman who'd paid and left just before the seizure, though he wants to correct her about the pink socks.  
  
Maybe.  Who knows, maybe it hadn't been frostbite.  It's not as if the police are going to be able to find her based on her ankles anyway, not after the woman's next hot bath.  
  
When Heiji's turn comes, he clings to Campari's coat hem and mumbles his way through a very poor attempt at Kanto-bei, biting back his vowels and hitting his consonants hard, and trying to keep to the flat monotone everybody else is using.  The woman taking his statement gives him a couple of odd, narrow-eyed looks, but doesn't comment when he stutters over his n's and s's.  
  
He hates Amari's skill at this so, so much right now.  
  
Eventually, with Heiji showing no ill effects and the corpse long gone, the police allow them all to leave.  The attendant gives them the oden Heiji asked for, even though she looks like she doesn't understand how anybody's going to eat tonight, and Campari divides it up between themselves and the children before sending the kids on their way.  
  
They make the walk back to the apartment in silence, oden containers warm and sloshing slightly in Heiji's arms.  Campari's back to his sharp-eyed unconcern, some air of awareness stretching out around them and into the mouths of the narrow alleys they pass, though to most people he probably looks like he's oblivious to everything that isn't straight in front of him.  
  
Nobody's home when they arrive, and Heiji doesn't want to know what Amari's up to, being out on a miserable Friday night like this.  As Campari toes off his shoes and flicks the lights, unwinding his scarf, Heiji thumps the door shut with one snowy boot and dumps the oden bag on the step up into the hallway.  
  
"Okay," he asks.  "How in the hell did you think to look?"  
  
Campari blinks.  Then, "Remember the hotel the other week?"  Heiji frowns.  "That was the computer's owner."  
  
The owner of dry spreadsheets of weapons trafficking and slavery and stuff Heiji still hasn't figured out the codes for, and--  
  
And.  
  
He _touched_ the bastard.  
  
"I think I'm gonna be sick."  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
Saturday morning, there's a half-day of school.  Saguru's phone rings while he's shivering at a street corner on his way there, huddled into his not-strictly-regulation Inverness and waiting for the lights to change.  
  
"Moshi moshi."  
  
" _Saguru-kun._ "  It's his father, and he sounds... stressed.  " _Can you still do that trick with languages?_ "  
  
"It's not a trick," Saguru replies automatically.  He'd spent long hours as a child learning to identify languages by ear, as part of his work in learning a select few for his career.  "And only native European ones.  Why?"  
  
" _I'm calling you in absent.  We need you in Beika_."  
  
Saguru frowns, turning away from the crosswalk to head to the train station.  "Beika?" he repeats.  "What happened in Beika?"  
  
" _There was a truck accident near the elementary school this morning._.."  
  
Saguru breaks into a run.  
  
The train to Beika is one of the limited express lines, skipping Tokyo's old uptown core before crossing a river canal and into what's left of the working-class lowlands.  It takes scarcely twenty minutes to reach the stop, and another ten to weave through the lightly crowded streets to the hospital.  By the time Saguru gets there, he's got the full situation -- inasmuch is as known -- outlined.  
  
A moving truck from a reputable company had skidded out of control near Teitan Elementary (approximately three blocks away), swerved into a nearby park, and flipped into a stand of trees there.  The driver and a passenger died on impact, impaled on low-hanging branches; the cargo compartment was half-crushed under its own weight.  Given the early hour and frigid weather, both park and school crosswalks had been empty, much to the relief of rescuers arriving on-scene... relief that lasted only until they heard weak cries for help in the cargo compartment.  
  
Upon getting the mangled doors open, rescue workers had discovered some two dozen survivors of varying nationalities and injuries, all women under the age of thirty, not one of whom spoke more than a few words of Japanese.  Three more were dead in the wreckage.  
  
"And no one's yet managed to figure out what language any of them do speak?" Saguru inquires of Megure-keibu, as the older man leads him through the winding halls of a secured wing.  
  
Megure-keibu clears his throat roughly.  "Not entirely," he corrects.  "We identified Arabic about five minutes ago... the lady's attached to your department, I think?"  
  
Lady?  There aren't that many women in the Task Force... oh.  "Jodie-san?" Saguru asks reluctantly.  
  
"That one, yes." Megure pauses, then shoots him a narrow-eyed look from under his hat.  "We're calling in everybody on this, Hakuba-kun.  Right now no one cares how loosely someone counts as one of us; we need to be able to talk to the victims."  
  
"I know, I know," Saguru replies quickly, placatingly.  Although, how did an American come to speak English, Japanese, and _Arabic_ of all combinations?  "I apologize for the miscommunication.  I was," what will be a polite enough fiction? "... curious about the legalities of it all, but of course that's none of my business."  
  
"What's none of your business, Hakuba-kun?" Jodie asks, as she steps out of the hospital room they're about to pass.  Her usual vapid smile is gone, eyes hard and mouth tight.  But she drops the question immediately, gaze flicking to Megure as she jerks her thumb towards the room.  "This one's Spanish.  Latin America, probably Central.  And," her expression darkens, "where the _hell_ are the child advocates?  I asked for 'em ten minutes ago."  
  
Megure cringes under her glare.  "En route, Jodie-san."  
  
She ups the glower another notch, then turns to Saguru.  "Next door's yours, Hakuba-kun," she tells him flatly.  "They're giving you the white kids first, figure the rest of 'em might know Spanish or Arabic."  
  
And now she's capable in Spanish too?  Who _is_ this woman?  
  
Saguru doesn't get the chance to think about it.  Jodie's expression smooths back into something unterrifying, and she turns sharply on one heel and stalks off down the hall to her next destination, a rookie cop all but unnoticeable in her wake.  Megure ushers Saguru off to his own first meeting, room 412 next door.  
  
The girl lying listlessly in the narrow bed has long blonde hair, half her face blackened and swollen under bandages, and a full-arm cast filling out the shoulder of her hospital gown like an American linebacker's gear.  It makes her look twisted in on herself, a wraith-thin Quasimodo of a schoolgirl.  Saguru estimates her age at sixteen, then in an eyeblink the proportions of her skeletal structure overshadow the size of her budding secondary attributes, and he rachets that estimate down to fourteen.  
  
One hazel eye opens to fix warily on him as he settles himself in the visitor's chair.  Slowly, he places his satchel on the ground, and huddles in to make himself look as small and harmless as possible.  "Hello there," he says gently, before patting his chest.  "Hakuba Saguru."  Pointing at the girl, "You?"  
  
"Ljuba Horvat," she rasps.  Then she murmurs a question in a language Saguru doesn't understand, something Slavic, but the question includes the telltale word for _what_.  
  
"Chakavian Croatian."  Saguru feels the small smile dawn on his face.  That dialect paired with a rival dialect's last name... "You're from Primorje-Gorski Kotar?"  
  
Her face lights up.  
  
Hm.  That's close enough to Istria...  "Italian?"  
  
What's visible of her brows knit, eye going distant in concentration.  "Speak... little bit," she replies in a thick accent.  
  
"Okay."  Saguru's own Italian isn't very good, but it should be enough.  "How long in Japan?" he asks, and so the questioning begins.  
  
A woman in a dress suit slips into the room about ten minutes into the interview, while Saguru is haltingly trying to translate details of the boat that brought Ljuba and several other women from someplace that's very likely Vladivostok.  Ljuba shuts down once more, and Saguru follows her shuttered gaze.  
  
"Child services?" he asks politely, though the woman's careworn face and government-drone clothes may as well be a neon sign labeling her as such.  Social work is one of the most soul-crushing callings Saguru's ever encountered; he's yet to meet an experienced agent without the extra years in her (usually a 'her') face.  
  
The man dogging her heels, on the other hand, is tall, broad, and stern-faced enough that Ljuba stifles a stricken squeak.  
  
"Absolutely not." Saguru's out of his chair and blocking the girl before he even thinks.  He's scarcely two centimeters shorter than the (law enforcement, government, professional intimidator) black-suited man sneering down his (racist classist dammit it's an _immigration official_ ) nose at Saguru and Ljuba.  Saguru draws himself up to his full height, musters up every drop of British public school in his blood and the will to take out his opponent bare-handed (this isn't Kid isn't psychotic isn't even armed), and stares the immigration official down as if he's every bit the aristocrat Europeans get stereotyped as.  
  
Between the stereotyping and the ease with which Saguru's able to meet someone's eyes, so used to using it to mean truthful instead of contemptuous, it doesn't take long for the immigration official to lose.  
  
"We just need to know the situation," the man mutters sullenly.  
  
"We'll be making arrangements to return the victims to their homes when the hospital deems them fit to travel," Saguru informs him.  "Until then, they're hardly in any shape to leave. Deportation will have to wait."  
  
" _Saguru-kun_ ," Megure says, horrified.  
  
Saguru inclines his head, unable to let himself bow while little Ljuba is trying not to tremble behind him.  "We appreciate your diligence, of course."  That, of course, devolves into awkward, face-saving pleasantries for a few minutes before the immigration official can make his escape, then Saguru turns to the social worker.  "My apologies.  You are Horvat-chan's advocate, yes?"  
  
When Saguru leaves several minutes later, he feels a great deal more at ease with Ljuba's welfare during her recovery and upcoming legal circus.  The advocate, Onuki-san, has people scouring for interpreters in the languages department at Tokyo University, and missing Horvat girls in northwestern Croatia.  
  
One of Megure's officers falls into step next to Saguru as he heads for his next room.  Unremarkable and open-faced, one of the younger but longest-standing members of the core team... ah.  "Takagi-keiji."  
  
"We've got a few updates, Hakuba-kun," Takagi says, opening up his little police notebook.  "The crashed truck's number and plates aren't in the company's registry," _or so they say_ echoed in the pause, "and the brakes were cut."  
  
Saguru blinks.  "The brakes were cut."  
  
Well.  That opens up so many new lines of inquiry, doesn't it.  Who cut them, obviously, and why?  Were they targeting the now-deceased driver or passenger?  Were they aware of the truck's use?  Were they trying to reveal or conceal the women and the human trafficking ring?  Is this a case of rival gangs?  Is it a case of sudden moral squeamishness?  Why, if the culprit was aware of the women, didn't he or she take the evidence to the police?  Why such a reckless and dangerous method?  Did they even care if the victims survived?  
  
... Was this even targeted at all?  It could be entirely random, or someone picking the exact wrong truck to practice upon for an upcoming 'accident'.  (Saguru doesn't believe _that_ much in coincidence, though.)  
  
This is going to be an absolute migraine for whoever gets the case.  At least it won't be Saguru, not once he's helped identify the girls' languages and they've gotten proper interpreters and advocates.  It's much too high-profile and dangerous.  
  
Why, then, does Saguru get the feeling he's missing something...?  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
Amari doesn't give Saguru more than a couple of weeks to try to untangle the mess going on in the department.  On the 25th, with icy rain pounding against the apartment window and the forecast showing the same all the way west to Kyushu, he grins slowly.  
  
"Excellent," he purrs, eyes fixed on the rain.  "I know what Kid's doing next."  
  
Heiji's shiver has nothing to do with the frigid weather.  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
 _Two temples, both alike in dignity,_  
 _In ancient Nara, where we lay our scene_  
 _From ancient grudge break to new meadows green_  
 _Where tiny sparks make mighty mountains clean._  
  
 _Shame those sparks,_  
 _As daylight doth a lamp; within, flames frozen_  
 _Would through the smoky region stream so bright_  
 _That cocks would crow and think it were not night._  
  
 _This evening's entertainment is unpinned._  
  
 _\- Kid Homage  ^_O_  
  
  
If Saguru wasn't in relative public, he'd let his head fall onto his desk and just wallow in the wave of hot-eyed exhaustion rolling over him.  As it is, no less than sixty percent of the Task Force glance over their shoulders at him, worry and pity obvious in roughly equal measure across their faces.  
  
"We've already narrowed it down to the Yamayaki Festival in Nara," Nakamori-keibu announces gruffly, snapping everyone's attention back to himself.  (Yamayaki means grilled mountain.  Wonderful.  Saguru does not want to know, but yet again he's not going to get his wish.)  Nakamori continues, "Which is this Saturday night, due to rain last weekend!"  He slaps the projector screen with an obsolete pointer, tip smacking loudly upon the heavy paper.  "The target site is an open field!  No stones, valuables, or artifacts exist in it!  In addition, the mountain is burned every year in the festival, and will be a fire hazard!"  
  
Saguru raises a hand.  "Nakamori-keibu," he begins when the man nods sharply at him.  "The notice is a rewrite of two sections from the Western classic, _Romeo and Juliet_.  Is there anything in the vicinity or event regarding feuds or," he knows damn well why Kid's chosen a tragic 'reckless teenagers' romance, but hopefully there'll be another reason, "separated and/or doomed lovers?"  
  
Nakamori blinks.  "The Yamayaki Festival began as part of a territory dispute between two temples on the mountain.  Is that what you mean?"  
  
A territory dispute.  Hm.  "We may be looking for items owned by each temple.  Items that would ordinarily be paired, but have -- for some reason or another -- been separated and are in the possession of these opposing temples."  He pauses.  "Perhaps something to do with lamps or roosters."  
  
With that in mind, the Task Force is set to making arrangements, in provisioning and travel and calling the betto (analogous to abbotts, as Saguru understands the role) of each temple, and eventually they manage to wrangle full lists -- with pictures, thank Doi-keiji's tenacity -- of portable valuables from each temple to cross-reference.  
  
"Wooden sculptures," Saguru groans, once everything else has been eliminated.  "At a _fire festival_."  
  
The sculptures in question -- 798-year-old carvings of Tentoki and Ryuutoki, lantern-carrying Buddhist spirits that strongly resemble oni or goblins -- are each 75 centimeters high, the height of a very young toddler, and although they're technically portable they'd be horrifically awkward to run with the way Kid does.  The man would have to be insane to take them entirely instead of simply smashing them to get at the fire opals somehow secreted within their carved lanterns.  
  
 _God, let Kid Homage be that kind of insane_ , Saguru thinks once again on Saturday afternoon, as the betto for Todaiji leads them up a winding set of stone stairs in the hillside.  The hillside itself is terraced, though currently it's just an unnaturally even cascade of dry grass, long since flattened into smooth curves under the weight of snow and frost; up above, the National Treasure of the Nigatsu-do complex towers across the sky.  The whole place is a mix of firetrap and sociopolitical-slash-religious minefields.  Saguru is going to strangle Kid Homage if he ever gets the chance.  
  
Up at the top, the shrine hall is encircled by a wide veranda, overhang lined with intricate metal lanterns (why oh _why_ couldn't Kid be targeting one of those?); the covered section has a few offering boxes and petitioner benches near the omamori booth, and an incongruous plastic bag dispenser for people to carry their shoes with them.  The Todaiji half of the Task Force accepts the bags briskly, most hopping on one foot to tug at the laces of their shoes rather than jostle rudely for bench space; Saguru is fortunate enough to not have to adhere to the police dress code, and has come prepared with loafers he can toe out of, instead of lace-up shoes.  
  
Inside, the shrine proper is eeriely empty.  Saguru's used to seeing at least a small group of worshippers at every large temple he's ever gone to; Japan has no set worship time akin to Mass, so there's always someone taking whatever chance they can to avoid large crowds.  However, no one but the monks and the Task Force are being allowed this close to the mountainside today.  
  
Without the people, line-of-sight to the back of the hall is clear.  The Buddhas are indistinct shapes behind gilded screens, with black lacquered and gilt-edged altars proudly displaying tall candles and sculptural lotus flowers.  More gold cascades from the ceiling, belled chandeliers chiming gently in the faint breeze stirred up by their entrance.  
  
The target is standing behind the altar, on the corner of the Buddha's platform, just to the left and forward of the screen.  It's nearly invisible, all dry wood and ochre, except for the opal reflecting light as if it's truly burning in Tentoki's lantern.  
  
"May we?" Saguru asks, inclining his head towards the small statue.  
  
The betto, unlike the insurance agents they'd already run the gamut of, is completely unruffled by the request.  "One at a time," he agrees.  "I'll take you in.  Please don't try to look upon the bosatsu."  
  
Right.  Nigatsu-do is a shrine to Kannon -- the bodhisattva or bosatsu -- not the Buddha himself, and her statues are _hibutsu_ : not to be seen by the public or laymen.  
  
While Saguru waits his turn, as the last and lowest-ranked of the Force, not within the formal chain of command or indeed employment at all, he looks back out the door and down the mountainside.  Nothing but the stone courtyard and tiled roofs of the lower Nigatsu-do halls, and some wintry tree tops, can be seen from here, but Saguru thinks he can just about hear the festival drummers far below at the base of the mountain, and according to his watch the procession should be lining up and getting their faces checked about now.  
  
"Hakuba-kun."  
  
"Coming," he replies, turning away from the view.  The betto calmly leads him to the far corner of the altar, and positions himself at an angle so that Saguru can't peek around the screen at the Kannon statue.  Not that he's at all interested in doing so, really.  The target is what's interesting tonight.  
  
It's a dry, fragile-looking wooden statue, like several Saguru's seen in various museums around the world, carved with consummate skill even to his amateur eye, but what's really interesting is that the lantern seems to have been carved all in one piece around the opal.  (The opal itself is of mild interest on its own merits; it's a vibrant sunset gold, and has an inclusion that looks rather like a lotus blossom among clouds.  Small wonder it wound up in the hands of a major Buddhist temple.)  In any case, there's no visible way for the opal to have gotten inside the lamp.  No visible way for Kid to get it out, either.  
  
Saguru brings out his magnifying glass and a penlight.  With a glance at the betto, who merely raises a brow at the items, he peers closely at the lantern from every angle available, which is to say every angle that the betto isn't blocking and that won't risk him catching sight of the Kannon.  
  
The top of the lantern has hair-thin shadows between carved detail, but they don't entirely encircle any section and must be only shadows.  The sides... the bottom... hm.  
  
Perhaps something akin to magician's tricks, like shallow angled compartments under tiger cages and in vanishing cabinets... perhaps.  Perhaps.  Saguru eyes the statue's hands.  Perhaps the stone was secreted in via a passage through the oni, which would've been subsequently plugged up and the stone's position adjusted through the lantern's slats.  Which does not bode well for Kid's ability to obtain the stone without destroying the artifact.  
  
Saguru snaps the penlight off and returns both it and his glass to his pockets.  "For a thief of Kid's caliber, I would ordinarily recommend boxing the statue away for the night and chaining the box down.  Steel cabling and such."  
  
The betto smiles.  "Beauty is as fleeting as everything else, child.  Locking it away won't change that."  Saguru blinks, and the betto kindly adds, "Did you like our Tentoki?"  
  
"I..."  Right.  Buddhism.  Permanence is an illusion which causes suffering.  "It's lovely."  
  
"And did you figure out its little trick?" the betto asks, slight amusement tugging at the corner of his mouth.  
  
"... Perhaps."  
  
"Therefore, you've gained more from Tentoki in five minutes than thousands of worshippers have in hours of prayer in his shadow.  So few people even notice little Tentoki anymore, much less admire him.  Too focused on Merciful Kannon and her golden trappings."  The betto makes a little gesture around them.  "Thank you for the recommendation, though."  
  
That's... certainly one way to think of it, Saguru supposes.  
  
His watch beeps, and the world reasserts itself.  
  
"Thank you for your time," Saguru tells the betto.  "It's time to go meet up with the procession, though.  If you wouldn't mind...?"  
  
The betto's smile is unperturbed, and he beckons Saguru along.  The Task Force remains in place, taking up guard stations around the perimeter of the hall, as the betto leads Saguru out and southward down the mountain.  It's a different path than before, broad stone stairs winding between sunset-tinted buildings and across their lengthening shadows, through the Nigatsu-do and then the Sangatsu-do complex, all eeriely empty.  The faint drumming ebbs and grows, a flute piercing through once they get past Sangatsu-do, until the left side of the path opens up and Saguru can clearly hear the music echoing off the empty, rolling meadow of the mountainside.  
  
This, then, is the site specified in the note.  The field, well over a quarter of the entire mountainside, they're going to be setting on fire in approximately fifteen more minutes.  It's a sea of soft straw, matted and mounded into waves by the weight of rain and snow throughout the course of the winter.  
  
Another few dozen meters ahead, a small bonfire's burning in a well-swept dirt clearing, just this side of the Mizutani bridge.  Unlike Western ideas of a bonfire, where the sticks are piled in a roughly conical shape within a stone ring, this one's atop a log palisade and heaped nearly head-high, with a line of firefighters in bright haori coats waiting next to the stream with buckets full and ready.  
  
The procession reaches the bridge just as Saguru and the betto arrive at the clearing.  Nakamori's standing guard at this end of the bridge, and the flute hits a sour note when he yanks roughly at the first player's cheek.  
  
One monk.  Two.  Three.  Nuns.  Hand drummers.  Flautists.  Torchbearers.  More monks.  One by one, the procession makes their way across the bridge and past Nakamori, every member passing with bruised cheeks and no torn disguises at all.  
  
Under the commotion of so many people, of the music thrumming and squealing and echoing everywhere, and the fire popping and crackling and sending up soft airy bursts of sound with every newly-lit torch, Saguru hears something rumble and start to buzz.  
  
"Do you hear...?"  
  
The betto's gone.  
  
"Nakamori-keibu--!" Saguru yells, and as Nakamori spins, the buzzing saws right through the music and something glints in the last slivers of sunset.  
  
Saguru recognizes the motorcycle just as Kid skids across the bridge, tires squealing, and opens fire.  Nets explode everywhere, all spinning weights and toppling people, and Saguru gets his arms up just in time to have them pinned to his chest by his own net.  The weights whirl around his waist and hit his hips (OW), then Kid yanks and Saguru finds himself laid out belly-down across the body of the motorcycle like some bodiceripper damsel across the barbarian 'hero's' stupid stallion.  Kid's hand even has him pinned there by his upturned arse.  
  
"Don't struggle, Meitantei, you don't want to crash the bike!" Kid yells happily, and turns them sharply uphill and into the steep meadows of the mountain.  
  
He doesn't realize Kid's scooped up a torch as well until the grass bursts into flame right behind their back tire.  
  
" _What the bloody effing hell--?!_ " Saguru manages around the netting cutting into his jaw.  
  
"Chaperones are such a pain, I think!" Kid replies.  
  
Because that makes so much sense, to take a _combustion engine_ and _gas tank_ and _lit torch_ up into a _fire zone_ and _set it all off._  
  
The ground turns to dirt, and Kid's grip shifts, twisting into the netting, and he yanks the two of them backwards to tumble off the bike and into the midst of a large, barren circle.  The bike careens off somewhere upslope and crashes.  Kid pins Saguru to the cold dirt an instant before the damned thing explodes, a wave of heat and pressure shoving hot grit into Saguru's face.  
  
Kid bounces back up after a minute, flipping Saguru onto his back.  The torch (he's still got a hold of the bloody torch) has been blown out; Kid all but skips to where the grass encircling them is igniting quickly, relights the torch, and waggles it happily above Saguru before hurling it off into what little grass hasn't been set alight by their path and the demolished bike.  
  
Saguru doesn't even see the switch in Kid's hand until after he's pressed it.  He flinches, but with a tiny rattling _pop_ , the net falls to pieces around him.  "What the...?"  
  
Something black and phallic lands in Saguru's lap.  "Oxygen and an air coolant.  Fifteen minutes a pop," Kid tells him, grinning.  "And if you capture me, neither of us will survive the fire."  The grin widens, sharpens.  "What _ever_ shall you do?"  
  
That isn't obvious?  Saguru stares at the little device for a moment (the air's already getting hotter and drier... they've got maybe two minutes before breathing it will blister their lungs), then tucks it away in the upper outer pocket of his jacket.  
  
Then he tackles Kid.  
  
It actually works.  Kid's sheer shock, pinned underneath Saguru in a fairly secure judo hold, is probably the only thing that actually let it work, but Saguru will take what he can get.  And at the moment, what he can get is, "I can always frisk you for the rest of these devices," he informs Kid.  
  
They're going to be in Kid's jacket, of course.  Someplace he can reach them easily without the fabric outlining them, as they would had he concealed them in secret trouser pockets.  Right underneath Saguru's free hand, in fact, which--  
  
It feels like something bites him when he gets fingertips under the coat's lapel, and then the world is spinning and he lands on his back in the dirt with Kid's knee in his stomach and his forearm heavy across Saguru's throat.  Kid shoves the mouthpiece of Saguru's rebreather into his mouth.  
  
Saguru can't breathe, despite the device, and he tries to glare that pertinent fact out.  
  
It only makes Kid settle to a more secure position, the same one Saguru had him pinned in actually.  The bastard.  Though at least the pressure lets up enough for him to suck in a little of the oxygen.  
  
Kid's eyebrow, the one Saguru can see under his tilted hat brim, raises.  One gloved finger lands on Saguru's cheek, and he traces out, _Behave?_  
  
Not bloody likely.  
  
Another tap.  _Boring fifteen minutes_ , Kid writes, visible eye narrowing.  
  
... Dr. Miyano had warned Saguru about being boring.  
  
Fine.  Good behavior.  Temporary truce.  Whatever Kid wants to call it.  What is he thinking they can do, though, unable to escape or speak to each other?  Play tic-tac-toe?  
  
Saguru shuts his eyes and nods, once.  
  
All the pressure on Saguru's throat and chest vanishes.  Saguru opens his eyes as Kid slides back down his body and onto his _oh crap Saguru hadn't even noticed the adrenaline reaction_.  
  
Kid goes very, very still.  
  
 _I am going to die._  
  
A slight, puzzled frown, and Kid rubs curiously against Saguru's rising panic.  
  
 _No no no no nononononono._  
  
He can't tell what Kid's thinking.  Where's the weapon going to come from?  What-- how-- _please make it quick I don't want to die in pain_.  
  
Gloved hands clamp down on his wrists.  Pull them up to settle against his chest.  Trace a word on each palm.  
  
 _Lust._  
  
 _Fear._  
  
Saguru yanks the _Lust_ one away as soon as Kid's finished the word, tries to bury it and rub the lingering tingle of Kid's touch away, because no, god no, that's not what this is at _all_ and he doesn't care if Kid knows he's afraid, not when the other option is... is _that_.  
  
Kid huffs in brittle amusement above him, and the finger returns.  
  
 _No kill._  
  
Great.  Wonderful.  He's not going to die.  He's... still semi-hard against Kid, against Kid who murdered his relatives for... who killed a lot of men who damn well deserved it for... for...  
  
Perpetuating the cycle is a myth, Saguru reminds himself fiercely.  Except that he can't remember what the actual percentages are, Kid is a sociopath and not a neurotypical empathic person who does not want to inflict his pains on anybody else, they can't be reached here or escape from here, and if Saguru attacks Kid is capable of killing him without even trying.  
  
(Kid wasn't shocked, Kid _let_ that tackle through, Saguru thinks with sudden clarity.)  
  
The gentle stroke along Saguru's cheek feels like an electric shock.    
  
 _Pay attention!_ Saguru mentally yells at himself, shaking off his panicky introspection.  Above him, Kid's got one hand folded up against his chest like a child playing rabbit ( _of Caerbannog!_ that irreverent gibbering part of Saguru's mind pipes up).  His other hand's fingertips are trailing just along Saguru's jaw, and Kid's head is tilted to the side in open curiosity.    
  
Somehow, Saguru can only get the impression of a preying mantis sizing up his head for dinner.  
  
The impression only gets stronger when Kid lets the rebreather fall from his mouth, leaving the sharp point of his chin visible in the blazing firelight.  "Maybe someday, Meitantei."  
  
"No."  Saguru chokes on searing smoke, but manages to gasp out a sarcastic, "I'd rather live, thanks."  
  
"Aw, I've let partners live before!"  Kid pauses.  "... One partner, anyway.  Maybe you'll be the second."  That is _not helping_ Saguru's composure regarding Heiji.  But he doesn't get to say so, because Kid shoves the rebreather back in his mouth and holds it pointedly in place for a moment.  "My ride's here," Kid purrs, before something gleams in his free hand and he slams it down over Saguru's throat.  Whatever it is, it's thin, flat, and metallic under Saguru's fingers.  
  
Kid hops up off of Saguru, brushing dirt from his knees and the hem of his cape, and waves, ignoring how Saguru is already pulling at the metal arch pinning him to the ground.  (Without leverage, he's not going to be able to get it out easily at all.)  Then something yanks Kid up into the smoky air and he disappears.  
  
Thirty-five seconds later, a wave of icewater crashes down, and Saguru's left clinging to the metal around his throat and coughing up dregs of water, every cough curling his body up towards his pinned head.  
  
The fire dies out some ten minutes later.  Without its warmth, and with the night wind picking up as the wintry air tries to equalize itself, Saguru starts to shiver.  Within minutes, his fingers are trembling too hard to keep a grip on the metal arch.  
  
Another two minutes and forty... something... seconds after that, the Task Force finally arrives.  
  
The EMTs in the Task Force's wake have Saguru wrapped up in heating blankets and breathing warmed oxygen as soon as Nakamori's pried the metal from the ground and freed him.  Saguru manages to wrest a jar of burn cream from one medic's hands, applying it to the telltale tight sensation over his cheeks and the backs of his hands, but he must needs submit to the other medic's fussing over the ligature mark on his throat.  
  
(He cannot help but flinch every time the man's fingers brush against his skin.)  
  
Other than that... "Bruising," Saguru answers curtly when asked, muffled by the air mask.  "Minor cuts.  I'm _fine_."  He'd notice broken bones or sprains, and if he were bleeding internally surely he'd be feeling considerably dizzier at the moment.  
  
Burn-cream-medic presses lightly against Saguru's abdominal cavity anyway, and just barely manages to dodge Saguru's reflexive kick.  
  
"Whoa, it's okay, Hakuba-kun," Nakamori says, looming up out of the darkness.  He's got a satellite phone in hand and has the strangest air of a cornered dog standing guard over a puppy.  "Conference call.  Can you debrief?"  
  
" _Keibu_ ," one of the medics protests, but Saguru reaches for the phone like it's a lifeline.  
  
"Hakuba Saguru.  Who is this?"  
  
" _Saguru-kun_."  It's his father's voice, tinny with the telltale echo of speakerphone, and suddenly Saguru feels... exactly like he did one night when he was ten years old, waking from a nightmare and knowing he was too old to run to his mother's room (too old to be having nightmares at all, he wasn't _five_ anymore).  It's a terrible mix of horror and shame and something almost like pride, feeling old enough to handle this himself.  (He isn't, he knows he isn't, but...)  " _I'm here with the department counselor and a child advocate -- Onuki-san, I think you know her? -- and we're in conference with Hattori-keibu."_  
  
 _"Hakuba-kun_ ," an older man says with a distinct Osakan accent.  
  
"Hattori-keibu.  Wonderful."  He does not want to discuss the sorts of things a counselor and child advocate need to know, but the police chief is exactly the perfect deflection.  "Tell me, does your son know how to operate a helicopter?"  
  
" _I... what?  No_."  
  
"How fast could he have learned?"  Wait, that's really more a question for... Saguru lifts his head, shouts the question vaguely towards the firefighters coordinating the final hose-down.  "Six months enough?" he adds.  
  
"For a fire flight like that?" an older man hollers back.  "Not at all!  I wouldn't send up a guy with six years under his belt!"  
  
So it wasn't Heiji flying the helicopter.  (It must've been a helicopter, one carrying a monsoon bucket.  They'll need to check flight radar for an object that stopped over one of the rivers or ponds before flying into the restricted airspace over the mountain.)  If he wasn't flying the chopper, though...  
  
"Can Heiji-kun operate a motorbike?"  
  
" _Yes_ ," Hattori-keibu answers, more slowly and suspiciously.  
  
Was this Kid Heiji again, then?  He hadn't looked anything like Heiji... but it's not as if Saguru was able to check him for a disguise... but he hadn't sounded anything like Heiji either.  "Can he speak Kanto-bei?"  
  
" _Not at all._ "  
  
Hm.  That doesn't necessarily preclude this Kid from having been Heiji.  What if he'd been using a voice transmitter and only pretending to speak?  That would be plausible.  
  
(It doesn't make sense, though.  Why would Kid not come harrass Saguru in person?  Why risk Heiji?)  
  
(... Was Kid testing Heiji, perhaps?  Reaffirming his Stockholm?  Ensnaring Heiji in ever deeper by forcing his hand into crime?  There's a certain parallel to how abusers and pimps use the social stigma of being victimized to force the victims to suffer it again...)  
  
Something isn't adding up, though.  What is Saguru missing?  
  
A robust immune system, for one, as it turns out.  The cough that develops overnight may have begun as smoke inhalation -- and most likely was, given the ashy streaks in what Saguru coughed up those first several hours -- but by Monday it feels like Saguru is more puddle than human, with waves of heat building and breaking over his entire body as he sweats through a low-grade fever.  
  
He sleeps more than he's awake, but even so he's painfully aware of the hours ticking past.  He can barely read the news headlines; magazines and books, with their small swimmy print, are right out.  Television provides a paltry few documentaries to distract him for a couple hours in the afternoon, but most of what's available is daytime talk shows.  Quite frankly he'd rather spend the time with Kid Homage than watching that sort of shite.  
  
(That's not actually true, but only by the narrowest of margins.)  
  
By Wednesday Saguru is ready to scream.  Baaya, for some reason, hasn't delivered the paper with his breakfast tray, and there's no coffee (again) to mitigate that irritant.  He pinches the bridge of his nose, though that just makes the heat in his head seem to bloom under his fingertips.  "Baaya," he rasps.  
  
"Yes, Botchama?"  
  
"What's in the headlines that I'm not being allowed to see?"  
  
She beams.  "Nothing at all, Botchama!" she says brightly.  "It's all very dull today, ohoho!"  
  
"Baaya."  He bites back a cough and hastily squeaks out, "That hasn't worked on me since I was eight."  
  
Her false innocence doesn't slip as he coughs painfully, curling in around himself and his tissues.  Ow.  Ow ow ow _ow_.  (God does he wish people came in modular parts and he could just switch out his lungs or something.  Ow.)  
  
He drops the tissues into the trash, uses the hand sanitizer, then holds out one trembling hand.  "Baaya.  Paper.  Now."  When she just smiles obstinately, he raises an eyebrow.  "Or must I waste what energy I have sneaking about all day until I obtain access to the news or internet?"  
  
The paper lands in his hand with a disgruntled snap.  "You fight dirty, Botchama."  
  
"One does emulate one's role models, Baaya."  He takes a sip of his broth as he unfolds the paper, ignoring Baaya's half-amused huff, and skims the headlines.  Nothing on the first page... second and third... fourth and fifth...  
  
There's an advertisement taken out upon the entire center page.  
  
 _The queen stepped down from heaven, and there_  
 _did she birth the kings and queens of that fairyland;_  
 _long ages passed, then of storming whirlwind came_  
 _a man who would be king.  No pinhead this, he felled_  
 _a road from sunrise, and founded the seat of the nation._  
  
 _Question his wisdom, for he chose to land in kalidah country._  
  
 _\- Kid Homage ^_O_  
  
"Well."  Saguru can't go.  He _can't_.  He's having enough trouble making it downstairs to the bathroom; chasing the Kid Homage wherever he's chosen this time is out of the question.  "That's sacreligious."  
  
"I beg your pardon?"  
  
"Tomorrow's National Foundation Day.  He's clearly targeting something to do with Emperor Jinmu, but he's conflated it with the Wizard of Oz."  Which means, "It's going to be an emerald."  
  
It's going to be a clusterfuck.  What's Kid going to do without Saguru to target?  (Will he return to Heiji and...?  What if toying with Saguru is all that's keeping Heiji safe?  ... What if toying with Saguru is making things worse for Heiji?)  And what are they going to do about Nakamori Aoko, when Kid discovers that Saguru is snubbing him once more?  
  
What if Kid decides this is the third refusal, as in _perhaps a third refusal will see you keeping company with our mutual acquaintance?_  
  
Saguru's breath rasps harshly, quickly, in his chest.  
  
Baaya frowns.  "I think that's enough out of you for today, Botchama."  
  
"I need the internet."  
  
"You need rest--"  
  
"There's no time to cater to my indisposition.  _Internet_ , Baaya.  I'll dictate to you if you insist but I needs must check references."  If nothing else, perhaps Kid will accept a doctor's note if it's tucked around the emerald, but that requires finding the right stone.  
  
Baaya caves and fetches her laptop.  Under Saguru's direction, she reads out articles on Emperor Jinmu, which leads them to the Kii Pennisula, that part of Japan jutting south between the ports of Nagoya and Osaka, then to Kumano -- 'bear field', bears being one of the animals used to describe Baum's monstrous kalidah -- on the southeast coast.  That leads them to the Kumano shrines, then to Kumano Nachi Taisha, spelled with the kanji for what-wisdom.  Kumano Nachi, a World Heritage Site, happens to house the only medieval emerald in Japan, a storm-green stone that looks more like a clear form of jade rather than the modern idea of an emerald.  
  
The legend goes that the stone was found and enshrined on-site sometime before the 10th century, when neighboring Buddhist temples began to be built and records kept.  Modern (and controversial) theories put its origin in India, and its arrival sometime in the 5th century with a wave of Chinese immigrants.  (Said theory rests on where emeralds can actually be mined -- Japan not being on that short list -- the known peaks in the flow of Silk Road trade, and the spread of writing in Japan.)  
  
Baaya pats his hand when they're done.  "I'll just email this to Nakamori-keibu, then," she tells Saguru.  "You rest.  You look like your fever's spiking."  
  
"Do remember to mention leaving Kid a note that I'm ill," Saguru murmurs.  
  
"... Of course, Botchama," she replies with a poorly-hidden grimace.    
  
Well.  She does have good reason.  This is Kid's fault, after all.  
  
She leaves the room, and Saguru lets time go.  
  
The rest of the day fades in and out, sunlight dim and timeless behind thick curtains and the heaping bedcovers.  Lunch arrives and is taken away, half-eaten and cold; medicine arrives and is taken with tea to kill the taste.  He's not entirely sure when night falls, but it's sometime during the period in which a new box of tissues and a thermos appear on his nightstand.  
  
There's chicken soup inside, still steaming, but he can only manage half a cupful before his abused throat overrides what little appetite he has.  He supposes that's why it's in a thermos, to keep warm until he's awake and feels up to eating.  
  
More vague time passes, clipped apart by harsh bouts of coughing.  Saguru tries a throat spray somewhere near his proper bedtime, or at least at some point when exhaustion has his eyes feeling like sandpaper and his shoulders pinned to the mattress.  It only works until his next cough, and he can barely get down another swallow of soup to take the taste away.    
  
The house falls silent, no faint echoes of television or Baaya's footsteps to be heard.  The moon hovers low in the west, a gibbous disk wavering small and golden above the streetlights outside Saguru's window.  
  
... Weren't his curtains closed, before?  
  
"So you really _are_ sick," Kid Homage says from the shadows.  
  
 _Oh Jesus God no._   "They left the note, then?" Saguru asks, covering his sweaty forehead with one hand.  Goddammit all.  He's not a match for Kid even at his best.  (He feels like shite and just wants to get a full breath and some actual restful sleep, why is this so much to ask?)  
  
"They did."  Stepping into view, Kid crosses his arms.  "Why'd you have to get sick?" he whines.  "Sick people are _boring_."  
  
"So sorry," _ow_ his throat, "to disappoint."  Then, because Saguru just cannot leave well enough alone, he acidly adds, "I suppose you've never heard of complications from smoke inhalation."  
  
Silence.    
  
Then, after a long moment, something cool bumps his nose, and Saguru peers out from under his fingers to see the titanium charm dangling from Kid's far-too-close face.  "I don't suppose you'll be better by Valentine's?" he asks without much hope.  
  
"I've honestly no idea."  Well enough to return to school, yes.  Well enough to handle Kid's... Kid-ness... in the middle of winter, even if he's willing to make accomodations and only toy gently with his prey?  Not bloody likely.  
  
Kid sighs.  "I'll have to think of something else, then, I suppose."  
  
"You do that."  Take the hint and _go away_.  
  
"Hm."  Instead of leaving or taking instant offense (Saguru has not been thinking this through), Kid rummages through his pockets.  He quickly comes up with a little stick, only about half the length of his hand, that looks like it could be a prod or probe of some sort.  Saguru only gets enough time to tense up (and gasp at exactly the wrong moment) before Kid's spraying something oddly herbal-scented in his face.  
  
His throat instantly goes numb.  
  
"Wha--?"  
  
"Get some sleep, Meitantei."  Kid gently strokes Saguru's sweaty bangs off his forehead, waves with only his fingers, and disappears.  
  
What the--?  What was--?  What did Kid _do_?  
  
Hands fisted in the covers, Saguru waits for something to happen.  Hallucinations.  Dizziness.  Unconsciousness.  An arrhythmia that is not at all likely with how steadily his heart is pounding in his ears.  _Something_.  
  
Ten minutes.  
  
Fifteen.  
  
Twenty.  
  
His throat remains blessedly numb.  His cough, though he can feel the heaviness in his lungs, is quiescent.  Kid doesn't return, and doesn't return, and eventually Saguru succumbs to the late hour and pain relief.  
  
It doesn't occur to him until he wakes up, daylight streaming through his windows, to wonder how the hell the man got from Kumano to Saguru's bedroom in Tokyo so quickly after the heist.  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
A stricken Baaya bundles him off to the hospital for a checkup and drug test.  
  
"Take a deep breath for me," the doctor says.  Saguru does, her stethoscope cold but comforting in its familiarity.  She moves it to the other side of his back.  "Again."  
  
This time he feels the deep buzz of an oncoming cough as his lungs protest.  "Pardon--" he manages before catching another fit.  
  
The doctor takes the stethoscope out of her ears and waits it out.  "Well," she says when he's finished.  "This may have let you get some sleep, but I can't say it's done any favors for your lungs.  I'm going to prescribe a mucolytic -- that'll help break apart what's in there so you can get it out -- but since we don't know how the two drugs will react, I'm going to have to admit you for observation."  
  
"It's that risky?" Baaya asks worriedly.  
  
"Drug reactions always are," the doctor replies.  "Chances are that if you don't have an immediate adverse reaction, you'll be fine, but there's always that small chance that some by-product will build up in your system until it reaches a tipping point.  So!"  She smacks the stethoscope into the palm of her hand.  "Monitoring.  I'll listen to your lungs again this evening, and if I don't like how well they're clearing you'll have to stay the night."  
  
Saguru exchanges a horrified look with Baaya.  
  
"I'll send someone in to take blood for testing, and bring you the paperwork, and we'll have a bed ready by the time you're done with that."  
  
The bed, as promised, is prepared within the hour, as are his prescription and a pair of keen-eyed nurses of indeterminate age: one built like a linebacker, the other plain-faced but sporting a chic haircut.  Taking the pills results in nothing untoward, and, with a short argument over the patient gown (which Saguru drops once he actually sees the garment, a blue wrap that resembles a kimono more than the backless paper thing he was expecting), the nurses leave him to change.  
  
Lunch arrives with Nakamori and a pile of paperwork, the latter of which looks almost more palatable than the gluey industrial okyaku on the menu.  
  
"This," Nakamori grumbles over the stack, "is mine.  _You_ only have to give an interview and schedule an appointment with the counselors."  
  
He'd really rather not.  "How was Kumano?" he asks instead.  
  
" _Interview_ ," Nakamori chides, poking his pen at Saguru's nose.  "Then you can help me figure out if Kid's escalating or not.  Doi-san thinks so but I _hate_ numbers."  
  
"Agreed."  
  
With Saguru's considerable experience in giving statements, the overview of the previous night goes quickly, and then they turn to the far more interesting problem of quantifying Kid's appearances.  
  
One item becomes immediately apparent.  
  
"He's not escalating," Saguru says, when they've graphed out the timing of Kid's heists.  "He's becoming more erratic."  
  
Even with as few data points as Kid's given them -- only ten heists so far -- there's a clear pattern emerging.  The autumn heists were a fairly steady eighteen-to-twenty days apart, though the COCOON fiasco was only sixteen and seems to have marked a turning point.  The most recent three heists have been, respectively, twenty-nine and eleven days apart.  
  
They work through the afternoon and well into the evening, paper piling ever-higher on every surface of the room, until at eight sharp a new nurse arrives with fresh pills and a firm, "Visiting hours are over, keibu."  
  
Nakamori frowns, but nods.  Gathering up the paperwork, he rests his hand on the pillow near Saguru's head.  "Get some sleep, Hakuba-kun," he says gruffly.  "I'll bring all this crap back in the morning, and we'll get the bastard next time."  
  
"Good night, keibu."  
  
Nakamori leaves, and under the nurse's watchful eye, Saguru takes his pills.  
  
The world blurs out with the empty cup still in his hand.  
  
Saguru wakes with a headache, the dry fuzzy mouth of extended unconsciousness, and various aches and chills from -- he catalogues blearily -- a number of unknown but presumably sharp-cornered obstacles and a cold concrete floor.  His arm is tingling, hung up on something metal that's cutting into his wrist, and his hand's gone icy and numb.  It's in stark contrast to the warm weight flopped over his torso, and Saguru opens his eyes to find a small, dark boy passed out on his stomach.  The two of them are handcuffed together, the cuff threaded through a pipe jutting out of the wall next to them.  
  
God damn the Kid Homage.  He'd all but promised nothing on Valentine's--  
  
Wait.  He recognizes this boy.  It was... where has he seen the child?  An earlier kidnapping, a brisk November day and a hot spring, the child with his twin minders in the baths at Kaga Onsen.  
  
Was Kid watching him even there?  
  
It's Kid.  Of course he was.  But what does he think he's doing?  Saguru hasn't seen the boy since November, and only the once even then.  Why bother fetching this particular child, whom Saguru has no personal connection to, when there are thousands in more convenient proximity?  
  
(Kid is a sociopath, perhaps he doesn't truly understand that one can care about someone never seen before.  But no, Kid's far too intelligent and observant for that.  So, what...?)  
  
A gray-clad man emerges from the shadows of the warehouse.  
  
It's not Kid Homage.  
  



	9. Chapter 9

  
It's not Kid Homage.  
  
It's _not Kid Homage._  
  
Saguru gets a hand around the pipe and pulls himself up, one arm curling around the unconscious child as he sits up and takes stock.  Interpol files flick through his mind -- he knows this man, he's seen his file, he remembers --  
  
 _'Really, a handlebar moustache and a penchant for dark trenchcoats and fedoras?  This one is a walking cliche!'_  
  
 _'Says the boy in the deerstalker and Inverness.'_  
  
 _'I'm thirteen.  They're not going to take me seriously as it is, so I may as well enjoy myself instead of going around in a stupid prissy suit.'_  
  
\-- Snake.  A gun-for-hire with a list of crimes ranging from petty bribery to murder, Snake has no loyalties and a wide range of contacts, but not enough information on any organization to be of any particular priority to Interpol.  He's little more than a jumped-up thug who crosses international borders.  
  
"I suppose you have reason for bothering to show yourself," Saguru rasps.  
  
Snake grins like a wolf, feral and toothy and not a patch on Kid's cutting mercurial insanity, and tosses a rolled-up newspaper onto Saguru's lap.  When Saguru slowly, warily unrolls it, he discovers it's a single page of classified ads, and there's a large box in the upper corner.  
  
 _Two boxes chocolate; one milk, one dark.  Available upon receipt of the bluebird's peaches, the birthday plum, the lamplights, and the philosopher's stone._  
  
 _One day offer only._  
  
Well.  This is...  Someone -- not Snake, Snake doesn't do a thing unless he's getting paid in cash, and he's not at all creative enough to come up with this -- someone is using Saguru as bait for Kid Homage?  To trade for the recent thefts?  And he thinks it's going to _work_?  
  
"It's on the internet too.  Let's see what that bastard Toichi thinks of it."  
  
So Kid Homage's name is Toichi?  Good to know, but that's of no consequence at the moment.  Something much more pertinent is the fact that, "I note there's no mention of where this exchange is to take place."  
  
"He has his ways," Snake says, with all the gravity of a B-movie villain.  "Toichi's a cunning bastard like that.  I wouldn't be surprised if he had you bugged."  He kicks at the child's backpack, left sitting in the corner just out of Saguru's peripheral vision.  "This time, I'm gonna shoot him in the _face_.  See if he comes back from _that_!"  
  
Snake shot Kid Homage?  _When_?  Who paid him to...?  
  
The man eyes the unconscious little boy (Saguru tugs him closer, cradling his small head, and damn the man for involving a child!), then sneers and storms off.  
  
Saguru's left alone to take stock of his situation.  He's in an industrial building of some sort, most likely a disused warehouse, with only one operational light source directly above.  The light is too weak to show the dimensions of the warehouse clearly, although -- Saguru rattles the handcuff chain testingly, 'accidentally' clanging the pipe loudly enough to both tell that it's solid steel and that there's a faint echo somewhere in the shadows beyond his pool of light -- it's large enough that it's either quite far from Tokyo proper and/or it's being rented at a premium price.  (For someone able to afford large gems like Kid's stolen, it could very easily be either or both.)  
  
Just at the edge of the light, Saguru can see the telltale pinpoint lights and reflecting lenses of several video cameras, spaced evenly apart in an arc around the two of them.  So they're being monitored (and constantly, too: between Snake and the night nurse, and the 'one day offer' threat, there's not likely to be any time in which they aren't being watched before everything goes to pot).  This is not at all surprising, considering Snake's left them to their own devices in the first place.  
  
Other than that, Saguru has his hospital wrap and socks, and the child (what was his name again...?) is fully-dressed, save for missing shoes and coat, and the backpack sitting frustratingly out of reach.  
  
The air catches in Saguru's lungs, and he buries a coughing fit into his short sleeve.  
  
Ah yes.  And that.  The cold floor is not going to help with that, though at least Saguru can hold onto the child to help keep them both warm.  
  
The child who is stirring in his arms.  "Nn...?"  
  
"Pardon the intrusion," Saguru murmurs, and he feels the small body tense.  "My name's Hakuba Saguru.  Are you feeling okay?"  
  
"... fuzzy..." the boy mumbles in Kansai-ben.  
  
Drugs, then, rather than a head injury.  
  
"It will wear off soon."  _I hope._   "Just sit tight, we'll be okay."  
  
The boy buries a nod into Saguru's chest, small hand fisting in the lapel of Saguru's gown.  "... Yer sick," he says.  
  
Well, yes, the gown may be of far better quality than the backless kind Saguru's used to, but it's still distinctively crunchy and plasticized to the touch.  "I had a bad cough," he replies.  "There was some worry about the medicine, so I was in hospital so doctors could keep an eye on me.  It's nothing you need worry about.  Though I apologize in advance if I cough grossly near you."  
  
He feels the frown against his pectoral.  Then the boy levers himself upright, swaying a little bit, and -- with a glare at his wrist when the handcuff gets in the way -- fishes in his pockets.  "Here," he says.  "I got a new handkerchief outta the laundry this morning." The square of wrinkled linen he offers up has an adorable border of smiling hand shapes and sudsy soaps in pastel colors.  "I ain't used it yet."  
  
The mere idea of coughing is enough to trigger the rough tickle in Saguru's lungs.  "Thank you," he says hastily, taking the handkerchief and turning quickly away from the boy to hack into it.  "Ow.  Ugh.  I hate that."  
  
"I bet," the boy replies, turning a sharp green gaze on him.  "You sure you're okay?  You really sound awful."  
  
"I'm as well as can be expected."  Which isn't particularly well at all, given the chilly environs.  The child seems to know that, too, giving the cold concrete a pointed glance before returning that look onto Saguru.  "I apologize, I didn't catch your name," Saguru continues, hoping to distract the boy.  
  
It works, somewhat.  The child's gaze goes old and shuttered, downright suspicious.  "... Hei," he eventually mutters.  
  
"Pleased to meet you, Hei."  Hei?  The boy's name is Hei?  "Again," Saguru adds.  
  
"... Again?"  
  
Saguru smiles, even though his mind is racing.  "We stayed at the same hotel a couple of months ago, in Kaga.  The town with the giant gold statue?  You said my hair was the same color as you."  In the baths, where Hei (a dark-skinned, green-eyed Japanese boy, only the second that Saguru's ever seen) had been bathing with his twin... cousins?  Brothers?  Two identical boys of college age.  
  
"Oh.  Yeah.  You said you were with the police."  
  
Uncountable trains of thought are colliding behind Saguru's friendly, approving smile.  
  
If Hattori Heiji had been missing for seven years, Saguru would think... but he's only been gone seven months.  And he's too young to be this child's father; he would've been only nine or ten when the boy was conceived, too young to even have had operational spermatogonium much less actual sperm cells.    
  
What if Hattori Heizo had had his sperm stolen, though?    
  
... What if Heiji'd had somatic cells stolen?  The famous Dolly the sheep had been cloned in 1996, which allows for nearly a decade of refinement in the field for some unscrupulous organization to begin production from selected unwitting donors.  Heiji would've been just settling into his adult personality, would've long since displayed appealing factors of IQ, athletic skill, deductive skill...  
  
Could this boy be why Hattori Heiji was kidnapped in the first place?  But _why_...?  Was the child not turning out quite the way Kid Homage's horrific relatives wished?  Was the child turning out too much the way Kid Homage did _not_ wish?  
  
Somehow, though... somehow, _somehow_ , Hei is related to Heiji.  (And Hattori Heizo doesn't know he exists.)  
  
Hei's been kidnapped to lure Kid in, as surely as Saguru has.  Hei is a child known to Kid, wanted by Kid, _used_ by Kid.  He must be the child Kid has access to, the child Kid used to get Heiji into the COCOON event.  (They still haven't figured out the logistics of that.)  
  
When Saguru first met him, the boy had been in the care of college-age twins, twins who were in the bath and therefore couldn't have been hiding Heiji's skin color behind body paint, twins who are Kid Homage's age and were at Kid Homage's heist and who have Kid Homage's decoy child.  
  
Kid Homage is twins.  
  
(Who is Toichi, then?)  
  
It was never Heiji at the heists.  It was both twins who molested Saguru and menaced him with a knife on the nanny's bed.  It was one twin keeping his distance at the museum, prior to being shot at.  It was one twin in Kumano and the other in Saguru's bedroom the night before last.  It was his twin Kid Homage was waiting for -- speaking to, subvocally -- in Kaga, who Kid had planned to co-molest Saguru with.  Not Heiji.  Never Heiji.  
  
... Except in the game.  Although it was one of the twins who Saguru failed to capture upon being released from the COCOON capsule.  Where, then, had Heiji been?  
  
"You falling asleep, Sa-- Hakuba-nii?"  The boy pokes at Saguru's shoulder with one sharp little finger.  "Don't sleep, you'll get sicker."  
  
Honestly, he's going to get sicker either way.  But he definitely does not want to risk being unconscious when Kid Homage arrives.  
  
Or, he thinks as he spots movement in the shadows, when Snake comes back.  
  
This time, the man's grin is more eager and sadistic, far closer to Kid's than before, when he swoops into the light with the trenchcoat flaring.  "Awake, are we?" he asks, bending to peer into Hei's face.  (To his credit -- or, more likely, Kid's credit -- the child takes the sudden invasion and terrible breath without flinching.)  "Tell me."  Snake's beady eyes gleam.  "Is Toichi horribly disfigured now?"  
  
Neither twin is, from what Saguru saw.  
  
"A broken shell of a man?" Snake adds hopefully.  "Does he give you nightmares?"  
  
Hei twitches under Saguru's hands.  
  
"He does!" Snake laughs.  "I knew it!  I knew I hit the shit!"  
  
"Oh belt up," Saguru snaps, pulling the boy away as best he can.  "He clearly doesn't know what you're blathering on about."  More due to Kid being two people (and therefore not a singular Toichi) than from anything else, but regardless no child deserves to be terrorized.  No child will be, not when Saguru's there and capable of deflecting such attentions onto himself.  
  
Hei seems to agree, as he buries his face into the angle of Saguru's shoulder and clings, small arms clutching around Saguru's neck.  
  
Snake glowers at the pair of them.  "He knows damn well--"  But uncertainty flickers across his face.  "Never the same face twice?" he prompts Hei.  
  
"... iunno..." Hei mutters into Saguru's neck.  
  
Saguru twists away when Snake pokes at the boy, but there's nowhere to twist away _to_ and Snake manages to get the boy's face visible once more by prodding at the ticklish spots under his chin, making Hei flinch as Snake's trying to get a grip on his jaw.  The three of them glare at each other for a long moment, then...  
  
"ROSE!" Snake yells, standing and shoving Hei and Saguru to thump against the wall.  He storms back across the lit section of floor, yelling vaguely towards the rafters.  "YOU STUPID-- DID YOU EVEN GET THE RIGHT BRAT?  ROSE!"  
  
"Oh, she got the right brat."  Kid's voice creeps from every wall around them, soft as frost crackling across glass.  
  
Snake's suddenly pointing a gun into the shadows far too close to where Saguru and Hei are locked up.  "Get out here, Toichi."  
  
"My.  Such manners."  The gun twitches a few centimeters to the left, and now it's pointing straight at Saguru.  "Spoilsport."  Kid melts out of the darkness to Snake's left, his own gun aimed at Snake's head.  (With Snake now fixated on Kid, Saguru begins trying to ease Hei behind him, where if any shots get fired at least Saguru's body will block their trajectory.  The boy clings like a limpet.)   Kid continues, "Let's put that down, hm?"  
  
Snake snorts, then, with a contemptuous look at Kid's gun, starts laughing.  His gun remains trained upon Saguru, shaking a little with the force of his laughter but not enough to actually miss should he fire.  "You think-- you think-- I'm going to believe that's not your old card-gun?" he howls.  "You might have the police fooled, but I know better!  You haven't hurt anyone worse than _him_ ," he clearly means Saguru, "through all your fake psycho Homage crap, and I'm supposed to believe that's _real_?"  More braying laughter, and Snake wipes a tear from the corner of his eye with his free hand.  "You've always been nothing more than a bleeding-heart who can bluff!  Once a magician always a magician, eh, Toichi?"  
  
 _But he's not Toichi_ , Saguru thinks.  _This Kid isn't who Snake thinks, and the gun is very, very much real._  
  
Kid shrugs, the motion just barely visible in the ripple of his cape.  "A tiger's stripes won't wash off," he says noncommittally.  
  
"So they don't," Snake agrees.  "Let's see them, then.  Gems out, come on now, we don't have all day and my trigger finger's getting tired."  
  
"The gems?"  Kid's free hand fans up, color flashing between his fingers -- first both golden opals and the Blue Birthday, then a chunk of emerald the size of a child's fist -- before vanishing.  "These gems?"  
  
"And the jade ring."  
  
"If I show you where that is, what's to stop you shooting me?" Kid asks reasonably.  
  
"If you _don't_ , what's to stop me from shooting _them_?" Snake snaps.  
  
"I don't know."  The shot and subsequent scream echo through the warehouse.  "How about the lack of a weapon?"  
  
"You shot me."  Snake's clutching at his wrist, staring at the gaping gory hole through his palm.  "You _shot_ me!"  A second shot sends the gun skittering out of his reach.  " _You_ \--!"  
  
 _Pssh_.  
  
Snake slumps to the stained concrete floor under a spray of pink gas.  
  
Kid kicks him onto his back, then takes out a bit of rope.  One makeshift tourniquet later, Snake's probably going to lose the hand but he won't bleed out in the next ten minutes.  Then his gaze lifts to meet Saguru's.  
  
"You're awake," he says.  "Poo."  
  
... Poo?  
  
"We agreed, Amari," and the second twin slips into the light, the night nurse limp over his shoulder.  The second twin is in slacks and a turtleneck sweater, face completely bare and not a stitch of Kid costuming to be seen.  He drops the nurse onto the ground like a sack of rice, with no particular care nor disdain for how she falls, then straightens.  
  
 _Bare faced.  Both twins.  No farce of being Heiji.  ... And I'm awake.  I've seen Hei.  I know he's Kid's, I know Kid is twins,_ I know.  
  
They have no intention of letting him live.  
  
Blind animal panic doesn't deafen him to the fruitless rattle and bite of the chains, as he kicks at the wall and yanks at them and the too-solid pipe.  It darkens the edges of the world but doesn't numb him to Hei's grip, or deafen him to Hei's, "Campari-- no, please, _no_ \--"  
  
"No bargains this time."  
  
" _Please_."  
  
The pipe's too strong, the chains too thick, he's bleeding against the handcuffs but can't really feel the bite of metal into his wrists--  
  
"Pick one to interrogate," Campari says.  
  
"The woman," Amari replies instantly.  "She'll have a higher pain tolerance but society's done half the psych work for us."  
  
A gunshot makes Saguru curl sharply into himself, around Hei, frozen for a split second before he realizes neither of them got shot.  (Snake's head is at the apex of a gory fan across the concrete, brains and blood and the smoking barrel of Campari's gun--)  
  
Campari pulls a water bottle out (poison, it must be) and opens it, takes a drink (not poison?), then stalks towards Saguru.  
  
( _I'm dead._ )  
  
Saguru shoves Hei against the wall, up against the pipe, (maximum chain length I need that--) and grabs for Campari.  His punch to the balls only grazes a hip; he misses Campari's nose, misses the gun hand, gets fingers clenched in a sleeve-- then it's like a mule kicks him in the chest, and Saguru finds himself coughing, breathless and pinned to the ground.  Campari's got one knee on his sternum, the other on his free hand, he's landed so that the chain is pulled taut and he can't lift his cuffed hand, and Campari's (gun is gone) pressing a pill into his mouth and pinching his nose (he can't breathe he has no air) and the water bottle's pressing against his lips--  
  
 _BANG_  
  
Campari falls.  
  
 _BANG_  
  
Saguru twists his head, spits out the pill, sees the woman slumping (dead) with the gun still pointed at them.  She woke, she shot Campari, she--  
  
Amari shot her.  
  
Amari is frozen with the gun aimed at her.  
  
Amari is still armed.  
  
As some inhuman, broken keen rises up from Amari's throat -- the man still frozen, broken, shattering before Saguru's eyes and every instinct Saguru has is screaming at him to stay still and not catch the madman's attention -- Hei bursts into motion.  
  
"Get up.  Get _up_!"  He shoves Campari's body off Saguru, strips off his sweatshirt and the tee-shirt underneath, wads them and bundles the tee high against the back of Campari's shoulder, against the entry wound.  "We can't let him die--"  
  
Campari's not dead yet?  Saguru scrabbles out from under Campari's legs, grabs the sweatshirt and packs it into the gory crater of the exit wound just under Campari's clavicle.  
  
"--he's the sane one!" Hei finishes.  
  
Oh god Kid Homage has been under a restraining influence this whole time.  
  
"Amari!" Hei yells.  "AMARI!  Call 119--"  Kid whines, deep in his throat, one sightless eye turning to them.  "HE'S NOT DEAD YET.  AMBULANCE.  NOW."  
  
Kid crumples to his knees.  But... yes, there's the phone, its screen lighting up and Kid thumbing in the number.  A pause.  "Raiken 8-9-2," Amari rasps.  "Ambulance.  Gunshot."  
  
"TWO AMBULANCES," Hei calls out.  "REMEMBER SAGURU."  
  
"... And one guy kidnapped from a hospital."  
  
As blood seeps sticky-wet into Saguru's palm, and Hei orders Kid... Amari... to give more and more information -- crime scene, dead bodies, still armed -- that a rational or dominant Kid wouldn't be obeying, all he can think of...  
  
... all he can think of...  
  
... is that something about this seems so familiar, yet so _off_.  
  
Who is this child?  
  
Why is he so capable in the face of all this?  With so much blood, chaos and death, guns and Kid's sanity and their very lives on the line, surely no child no matter how horrifically raised would be able to cope instead of make things worse.  Surely no child...  
  
Surely no _child_.  
  
Is he really a clone?  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
"What's going to happen to them?"  
  
Heiji almost doesn't realize he's spoken until the words are hanging in the air between him and Saguru.  He winces -- he knows the answer, it's prison as soon as Campari's out of surgery -- and his little fingers go white-knuckled around the edge of the plastic visitor's chair he's perched in.  
  
Saguru doesn't answer for a long moment.  He coughs roughly into fresh tissues, tosses them meticulously away while taking a few hissing breaths from the thrumming oxygen machine between them, then sighs.    
  
On the other side of a thick wall of bulletproof glass, in the next room over, Amari -- wearing nothing but a paper gown (far cheaper and flimsier than Saguru's, it's from the suicide watch kits in the mental ward so it can't be used as a garotte) and bed restraints -- is staring, empty-eyed and catatonic, through the locked door to the corridor beyond.  To the surgery suite where Campari is.  
  
He looks painfully small and young.  
  
"Prison, I would think," Saguru replies.  "Or a psychiatric hospital."  
  
Why are hospitals always so damn freezing.  Excellent A/C system, though; Heiji didn't even hear the gust of frigid air that landed on him when Saguru spoke.  "That won't hold them," Heiji bites out.  His eyes are prickling with heat.  He can see three, four, five, six walking dead from here, how many hundreds can a hospital hold?  "They're too good.  And," the kidnappers can't have tracked down Heiji themselves without knowing about the twins, but that one bastard was so sure about some singular Toichi, "they're going to want to hunt down whoever targeted them."  
  
"Mm."  Another few breaths.  "And retrieve Heiji?"  
  
What?  
  
"Assuming they've left him someplace where he cannot obtain food or water on his own," Saguru prompts.  
  
Saguru doesn't know.  He doesn't... how in the hell--?  "The fuck you think I _am_?" Heiji blurts.  "All of that, and you think-- you--"  Heiji rubs the thick of his palm over his eyes.  Okay.  Okay, what would he think seeing a kid obviously related to Saguru if he didn't know about the apotoxin?  (Little brother, duh, unknown little brother, so the mom couldn't know and it'd be a half-brother--)  
  
"Clone," Saguru replies.  
  
\-- or that.  That's.  Actually kind of a good guess, just whacked enough to be plausible without needing Hattori Heizo to be cheating, and it'd fit having Shi-neechan for a doctor instead of, y'know, a real doctor.  "Afraid you're gonna meet your weird shit quota for the year," Heiji mutters.  (They're all dead anyway, it doesn't matter whether he keeps quiet or not.)  "'Cause I ain't a clone."  Heiji glances sidelong through his fingers at Saguru and tries to smirk.  It comes out a little sickly and lopsided, but it's close enough.  "Hi.  Hattori Heiji."  He shrugs out a little 'ta-dah!' gesture.  "Guess why the twins got interested enough to keep me instead of finish the job."  
  
Saguru gapes for a long second, visibly rattling through theories and possibilities.  "... There _was_ no 51st COCOON," he mutters.  Then he goes a ghastly shade of gray.  "You-- but you-- he-- _they_ \--"  Somehow, Saguru manages to go a shade whiter.  "They didn't.  Please, they didn't--?"  
  
"Didn't what?"  The hell's Saguru freaking out about?  "Okay, yeah, they tried to kill me, it hurt like a bitch, and be damn thankful you spit the thing out because chances are you'd be nothing but a lot of goo and clothes on the warehouse floor--"  That's not helping.  What else...?  
  
Oh.  Right.  
  
"... You.  Um.  Kinda saw the worst that they actually ever did."  Heiji rubs the nape of his neck.  "I kinda eventually figured they're pretty sex-averse.  Dunno why."  
  
Saguru swallows.  "... I do."  
  
"I mean, not that there weren't threats a coupla times.  Early on.  But I bit the hell outta Amari's arm, so."  Saguru does need to know he's not entirely wrong, and they're dangerous.  "The murder-everybody-else stuff worked a lot better.  After they killed a guy when I got loose."  
  
" _Killed_ \--?!"  
  
"Which is why you gotta let us all go."  Heiji twists, nose-to-nose with Saguru, and his hand lands on a loop of the oxygen tubing.  (He quickly resettles that hand to free it and pinches the flattened tube round again.)  "Before they recover enough to break loose and shoot their way out."  
  
Saguru, the idiot, completely ignores that.  "Who did they kill?  Heiji?"  
  
"I think you're missing the important part here.  Public facility?  Helpless people?"  
  
"Hours of surgery left," Saguru counters.  
  
A knock on the door snaps Heiji's mouth shut, and what he was about to fire back flees his mind as Saguru's doctor comes in.  "Well, how are we feeling?" she asks, shooing Heiji off the bed and out of the way without actually touching him.  
  
She doesn't touch Saguru any more than necessary through the ensuing exam, either, and most of that touch is from the stethoscope.  It's painfully obvious that she's been debriefed about Kid's harrassment of Saguru and is extending that to Heiji.  
  
The exam is short, and concludes with her briskly untaping Saguru's nasal cannula and turning off the oxygen machine.  "Keep this up, and you'll be home by morning," she tells Saguru.  "Maybe even tonight.  We'll see in a few more hours."  
  
Then she turns to Heiji, professional smile gentling into something truer.  She looks like she wants to ruffle his hair, though thankfully she refrains.  "Bet you'll be glad to go home too, hm?"  
  
Whatever else she says gets lost in the surge of white noise.  Home.  "... Yeah..."  _Home_.  
  
They think he'll be going home.  
  
They _will_ be sending him home.  To Osaka.  To his parents.  To... to...  
  
He can't.  He can't, the twins will _kill_ them, he-- he--  
  
He doesn't realize he's bolted until the door handle thunks under his hands, until he's flung it open and himself through and crashed right into someone face-first.  Long hands catch him by the shoulders.  "Hey, hey kid, whoa there--" Some lady with a thick American accent has him and he can't break her grip.  "Where are you going?"  
  
He can't stay, he has to go, he has to get out and find... find... he knows where one of their stashes is, the storage locker with the sweet sweet motorcycle, the code VTY1412, he can go there, they can find him there, they won't hurt his parents--  
  
The woman scoops him up over a shoulder, pinning his kicking feet and hauling him back into the room.  A quick jerk of her head, which Heiji feels in the press of muscles against his hip, sends the doctor off with an apologetic glance.  
  
"Jodie-san," Saguru says from behind him.  "What are you doing here?"  
  
"Stopping an escape attempt, it looks like," she replies bemusedly.  She plops Heiji back onto the bed near Saguru's knees, but doesn't let go.  "What set him off?"  
  
"Home," Saguru replies.  "But truthfully, Jodie-san, why are you here?  This is none of your business-- you won't be allowed to put any of it in your documentary, what--?"  
  
She grins, sheepish.  "Right."  Out comes a thin black wallet, and she flips it open to reveal an unmistakable shield and ID.  "Jodie Starling.  FBI."  
  
Heiji gapes, a months-old phone call racing through his mind.  _We don't want them on our asses... governments always need people who can do the dirty work... any agency's bad enough... they can't block us from finding the leak._   "You have to go."  He grabs at the woman's shirt sleeve.  "Now, quick, before they wake up."  
  
She blinks, then glances at Saguru.  
  
"He's been like this since we got here."  
  
Goddammit, they have got to stop treating him like a fucking ignorable kid!  "THEY WILL KILL YOU BEFORE THEY WORK FOR YOU," Heiji howls.  "THEY'LL KILL EVERYBODY.  JUST LET US GO AND GET THE FUCK OUT."  
  
"Language, Heiji-kun."  
  
Heiji freezes, one tiny fist just centimeters from Starling-san's face.  That voice.  He can't.  He... He can't stop himself from peering over Starling's shoulder.  
  
His mother's standing in the doorway.  At first glance, she looks... her kimono is perfect, a plum-violet robe and black obi set in strict clean lines, her hair in a matronly bun.  But her face is drawn and red-eyed, one ashen hand clutching her shawl around her shoulders: she looks like she hasn't slept well in months (she hasn't, she obviously hasn't).  "... Okan."  
  
She nearly stumbles when she steps forward.  The room's not large; she's hovering over him, taking Jodie's place, before Heiji can think of anything else to say.  "... They said you'd changed," she murmurs, some stricken soft voice that Heiji's _never_ heard out of her before.  
  
Her eyes are shining and she's blinking too fast.  Heiji swallows a lump in his throat.  
  
"This..." Her fingertips are light on his jaw, burning through every scrap of thought left.  "... This is so much more believeable than you running around committing crimes."  
  
Heiji winces and looks away.  "... I helped plant gas capsules on the kids at COCOON," he admits.  It always turns out worse to hide things from his mother.  Always.  And this time... this time he doesn't know how it could get worse.  "I stalked Hakuba Saguru and Nakamori Aoko so Kid would have pictures to threaten the police with.  I broke into a hotel room and stole criminal data, and passed it to someone I think might've been yakuza.  I--"  
  
His mother's hand closes his mouth.  "Lived.  You lived, Heiji.  No mother could ask for more."  Heiji stares, heart breaking, because that can't be true, it just _can't_ , and Shizuka glances at Saguru.  "Excuse me," she says, before hitching up her skirts to sit on the bed and pulling Heiji into her lap.  "Indulge an old woman," she adds, before Heiji can even pretend to struggle.  
  
He doesn't want to pretend.  She feels nothing like the twins, smells nothing like them, doesn't have a single edge of playfulness or insanity about her... she's just... safe.  
  
Huh.  "... I forgot..." Heiji mumbles.  What it was like to be held by someone who wasn't terrifying.  
  
She buries her face in his hair and just breathes, shakily.  And if Heiji's hair is growing damp, well, that's just what happens when people exhale.  (And if his own eyes are wet and the room blurring, no one is saying a word.)  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
Within an hour of Shizuka's arrival, Hattori Heizo and four seasoned cops -- all SWAT, though they're in regular uniforms instead of body armor, and all of whom Heiji's known since he was in diapers -- whisk them away in an armored van.  The drive back to Osaka is long, though Heiji, exhausted, falls asleep against his mother shortly after sunset, and doesn't wake until she's tucking him into his futon.  
  
He falls back asleep before he can do more than blearily notice he's in his old room, and doesn't wake until well into the morning.  
  
His old room hasn't changed a bit.  It's a little cleaner -- he was pretty sure he usually has his homework spread across the desk -- and the school uniform waiting to be worn is for winter though he'd been kidnapped in July, but otherwise... it hasn't changed at all.  
  
It doesn't fit him anymore.    
  
He wasn't... wasn't that guy anymore.  Someone with nothing more in his head than kicking ass and hanging out with his best friend.  Kendo and motorbikes and Ellery Queen.  (Crime was so much simpler in the books, the movies... somehow he'd only tripped over that kind, the dramatic locked-room and isolated-resort sort of stuff until.  Until Kid.  
  
The bad guys are so much worse than he'd ever arrested before.  
  
The good guys are so much more gray.)  
  
Heiji presses a hand to his forehead.  Kendo and motorbikes and Ellery Queen.  That's not who he is now.  He's... Kid's.  And will be for a long time, deep inside.  
  
A dove warbles on the veranda.  
  
Heiji's head snaps up.  Sitting there, on the other side of the glass sliding doors, a black rock dove is fluttering and cooing over a letter.  Slowly, Heiji shoves the heavy comforter off, shivering a bit in the cool room.  The worn tatami crunch lightly under his feet as he pads the few steps to the door, kneels, and opens it.    
  
Something up in the lintel beeps and startles the bird away, leaving the letter behind.  Heiji quickly snatches it up and stuffs it under himself, just as his father bursts through the door.  
  
"Heiji?"  
  
"... I'm fine."  His father's eyes are sharp but alarmed, taking in the emptiness of the room warily.  "I just wanted some air."  
  
"... Right.  Of course."  Heizo takes a step back, and Heiji lets his shoulders relax just a little as his personal space (as his personal room) is all his once more.  "Lunch will be ready in an hour."  And, awkwardly, his father closes the door.  
  
Heiji waits until he hears his father's slow, weary footsteps pad heavily away.  
  
The letter is a single sheet of thin rice paper, colored to look like parchment and addressed in green ink, Harry Potter style.  It's held shut with a sticker made to resemble a wax seal, if the Tokugawa mon had ever been done in wax seals, and reads:  
  
 _Yamaguchi Hei_  
 _Hattori Heiji's bedroom_  
 _Osaka_  
  
Inside, the letter (also green) is in two different handwritings.  
  
 _February 15th_  
  
 _Heiji-kun,_  
  
 _Two boxes of chocolate: both bitter, tempered hard.  It takes only a seed and re-tempering to correct the latter.  This is perhaps not the most seasonal of openings... but then again, yesterday had no significance when the rules were being set._  
  
 _The simple fact that we were caught has made us re-evaluate our situation.  I suspect that we were programmed to self-destruct within the year without handlers, not so much as a failsafe as a method of vengence should we take any lingering disloyaties into our own hands._  
  
 _Grandfather was a bastard like that, after all._  
  
 _It's a pity it took getting shot to make this assessment.  With this in mind, though, we've taken a job offer with the FBI.  Japan, I suspect, is just glad to be rid of us, at least since we're going to a country already so deeply entrenched in their defense.  We aren't expected to return for quite a while, but we will be returning periodically until the situation no longer calls for us.  Whether that'll be due to our deaths or some other change in circumstance, we'll just have to see._  
  
 _So you can expect to see us again!  They can't stop us taking visitation rights.  ^_^_  
  
 _Should you ever require our services, legal or not, the contact information below will be viable in five days, or you may ask for James Black or Jodie Starling at the FBI._  
  
 _Take care of yourself._  
  
 _Yours,_  
 _the Bitters_  
  
  
END

**Author's Note:**

> Campari is Shin'ichi. Campari is a type of bitters, which is dark red and was originally colored with carmine dye. Carmine is made by crushing, boiling, and filtering cochineal insects by the thousands.
> 
> Amari is Kaito. Amari is the plural form of amaro, another type of bitters, which comes in a variety of flavors and styles.
> 
> Both campari and amaro are Italian alcohols.


End file.
